The Long Road Home
by Conna Stevenson
Summary: Damaged and unable to communicate with or even find his fellow Autobots, a lone survivor crashes to Earth and must locate Optimus and the others before a dangerous enemy arrives. Who can he trust, if he cannot tell friend from foe?
1. Refugee

_Standard disclaimers: Transformers and its canon characters is the property of Hasbro, Takara, Michael Baysplosion, and whoever else; the Tomahawk belongs to Dodge (bless their insane speed-freak hearts) and any original characters herein are my own brainchildren._

* * *

**The Long Road Home  
1: Refugee**

_"...I am Optimus Prime."_

The signal was a jolt out of the black void, a bright and welcome shock to the harried, weary entity trundling doggedly through space. Exactly where he had been trundling to was unknown, and he had long since stopped worrying about a destination, being far more concerned with survival. And even that concern was hanging on by precious few shreds.

_"-- and I send this message to any survivors of my kind who may be taking refuge among other systems, other stars."_

Sensors and receivers now wide open and all systems fully alert, the solitary being came about to bear on the signal, drinking in coordinates and telemetry to feed the hope that had nearly been extinguished. He cautioned himself that Optimus Prime might next relate news of defeat and a warning to stay away, lest victorious Decepticons reduce the survivors to their most basic components, but--

_"You are not alone. You have a home here, among others of your kind."_

Disbelief and joy rippled through his processor. It had been so long, interminably long, since he had had contact with friendlies, but all too recent were the encounters with hostiles. He focused his sensors into a narrow beam, getting a fix on the new homeworld and committing the coordinates to high-priority memory.

_"We are waiting."_

He opened a return channel. It would reach Optimus before the Autobot himself did, but there was vital information that couldn't wait for personal delivery. If he had received the broadcast, so would his relentless pursuers.

_"Optimus Prime-- I am--"_

Another signal interrupted with a searing and most _un_welcome shock, piercing and burning through his systems, immediately silencing the communication. The Autobot reeled, disoriented and wracked with pain, trying frantically to re-extend its sensors to scan for the source of the attack. He cursed himself for making such a basic mistake; while his sensors had been narrowed, he had effectively blinded himself to all else around him, and the enemy had seized the moment.

And now he was effectively blind to everything-- a quick internal diagnostic told him that the electronic blast had fried his communications and sensors, the most vulnerable systems at the moment, to a crisp. Motor control and propulsion were a tad fazed and twitchy but largely undamaged and recovering quickly. Weapons, which he now bristled indiscriminately, were also operational, thank the Matrix. But as far as seeing his opponent, he had been reduced to some woefully short-range scanning, transcanning (fat lot of good that did him out here, though) and bare basic optics.

He used those, and almost wished he hadn't.

The Decepticon vessel bore down on his position with a self-satisfied slowness, as if assured that the much smaller Autobot was now rendered helpless and easy prey. He was almost insulted. A lucky shot during an unguarded moment was one thing. To swagger in and pick him apart gear by gear?

After all this time, he was not about to let his rekindled hope die so swiftly.

He fired his pulse cannon once, twice, attempting to target the Decepticons' sensors, returning injury for injury. He knew it wouldn't be nearly enough to inflict the same magnitude of damage, but it bought enough time for the Autobot to use its best, most prided asset: Speed.

He turned again, oriented on the new homeworld's coordinates, and was off in a streak of light and energy.

* * *

_"Autobots, report! Did anyone else get that transmission?"_

_"Affirmative, Prime, but I got cut off."_

_"Me too."_

_"It wasn't us-- it was cut off from the other end. It wasn't long enough to get a position, unless someone else's scanners are working better than mine at the moment."_

_"No, you're right, Ironhide. Not enough data. Who was that?"_

_"The way we scattered looking for the Allspark? There's no telling."_

_"Bumblebee, start scouting for incoming. Ratchet, prepare for possible damage. He sounded distressed."_

_"Or he's coming in hot."_

_"For all our sakes, Ironhide, I hope not. Everyone stay alert and be ready for anything. Notify me if he makes contact again. Optimus out."_

* * *

"Isn't it just awesome?"

Nicole Darling had a word for the obscene piece of machinery currently sitting in the showroom, but she didn't dare say it in front of her aunt. _Awesome_ was so far the only descriptor her cousin Jacob could muster, when he could muscle the word past his drool. Her two other cousins, testosterone factories all, were in a similar state of vehicular lust.

The newly-renovated Darling Motorcycles showroom had a temporary crown jewel: a Dodge Tomahawk concept motorcycle.

And wasn't all of Topeka just all a-flutter?

The rare machine was on loan for two weeks as a gimmick to draw in customers. Uncle Terry knew a guy who knew a guy who owed somebody a favor, and it somehow added up to getting a non-functioning 'rolling sculpture' parked in the shiny new showroom. Supposedly it could reach four hundred miles plus per hour, and had all sorts of other outrageous stats guaranteed to make even the most casual biker salivate like Pavlov's dogs.

All Nic wanted to know about it was when it was leaving. It was quite possibly the most ridiculous thing she had ever seen. It was all brushed nickel finish and chrome, shaped vaguely like a bloated torpedo with doubled wheels at either end, and a seat you didn't sit in so much as cling to as you lay over the length of the chassis. She hated motorcycles wholesale to begin with-- the Tomahawk seemed to earn her contempt merely by showing up.

To her, the machine stank of showing off for the sake of showing off.

"I'm taking bets," Marie Darling said as her niece approached the front desk, "on how many people will be mad that they can't actually buy it."

"We need to put up a sign," Nic said. "Not street legal, display only, blah blah..."

"Yes, sweetie, but you know customers can't read."

"C'mon, Aunt Marie, I'll get my Sharpies out and everything. Get Jake to scrape some cardboard from the shop floor." Somehow the idea of a shabby home-made oil-stained sign scrawled with poorly-spaced letters (possibly misspelled) propped up against that shiny tribute to excess really, _really_ amused her.

Marie rolled her eyes and got up out of the desk chair. "Wouldn't your uncle have kittens. Mind the phone, Nic, I've got to get to the bank before it closes."

Obligingly Nic took the seat. Minding the phone was about all today had been good for. It had been raining steadily all day and such weather didn't exactly put people in mind to buy motorcycles. Most Kansans stayed indoors on days like this anyway; flash flooding was a real danger on the prairie.

"Toby, please do not molest the five-hundred fifty thousand dollar paperweight," Nic barked at her youngest cousin. The fifteen-year-old jerked his hands away from the Tomahawk and did his utmost to look innocent, only to fail completely. "Remember your dad said no touchie the shiny or he breaky your head."

"YOU ALL HAVE WORK TO DO ANYWAY," boomed a voice from the workshop entrance, where Terry Darling, all six and a half feet and three hundred pounds of him, stood with arms crossed and glaring at his three sons. The two eldest, Jacob and Martin, made a beeline into the shop where several bikes lay in various states of repair, and Toby scurried for the back office where his summer school homework awaited, doubled in retaliation for a grand fib that there was no homework in summer school. Nic merely sat at the desk and twiddled with the phone cord like a good little bored receptionist.

"Gotta put a cage around that," Terry mused as he strode over to the desk, wiping his grease-stained hands on a grease-stained rag. (Nic always wondered-- did that cancel the grease out on both hand and rag, or just achieve an equilibrium?)

"Which one?" she chirped. "Jacob?"

"The Tomahawk, wiseacre." Terry leaned on the counter and grinned ingenuously. "So what does my favorite niece want for her birthday?"

Nic returned the winsome smile. "Broadband in here."

"Once business picks up, babes. Hit me again."

Nic threw up her hands. "Oh, come on, Uncle Terry, you go to all the trouble to put in all this shiny, the lights, the fancy floor, the accessories shop, the vintage Harley crap--"

"Watch what you say about the Harley crap."

"And we're still keeping paper records and phoning in credit card payments whenever the modem craps out-- it's so slow!"

"I thought you liked slow."

"Not when I have to deal with those twenty-something wannabe bikers who try to pick me up. Please, anything faster than dial-up. At least a new computer that doesn't run on DOS. Do you have some fear of leaving the early nineties?"

"We're going to get a nice big influx of cash-money-paying people soon, so roll your britches up and wade through, sweet pea." He raised a brow. "I hear they got wi-fi in the McDonalds."

"Hey, better the devil you know, right?" Nic caught the not-so-subtle you-could-be-flipping-burgers hint and let the matter drop. "Laptop?" Almost.

"Seriously, Nic, you need to feed me some suggestions or your aunt will get you some more of those gawdawful macramé sweaters. Remember last year? My retinas haven't healed yet."

Nic pretended to be very interested in the coiled phone cord. "I don't really want anything."

"How about--"

"Uncle Terry... really. Don't make a thing of it."

Terry let out a long breath, his jovial manner dashed. For several moments the only sounds were the steady hiss of rain and a distant rumble of thunder.

"Dead today. Almost closing time," Terry mused aloud. "Why don't you go on out and rent us a bunch of movies? I'll close up tonight."

Nic shook her head and pointed to a stack of printouts. "Paper records require tedious and time-consuming filing. Oh, if only I could do it electronically."

Terry gave her a comical glower and backed toward the door. "You have won the battle, but not the war."

"Yeah, yeah, curses foiled again, next time Gadget next time. See you at home."

And then she was alone. So she dove into the task of filing the week's paperwork and tried to forget about her impending birthday and all that day had come to signify. She was so absorbed in the work that she didn't notice that a particular rumble of thunder wasn't fading out, but growing louder.

There was a muffled boom from outside. The ground shook. One of the showroom Kawasakis fell over; its kickstand hadn't been extended properly. A ceramic mug sporting the Harley logo jittered and toppled from the edge of the front desk and shattered, thankfully empty. Someone's car alarm down the street went off. The Tomahawk merely wobbled imperceptibly.

That got her attention.

Nic ran to the front windows and peered out into the half-dark rainy gloom. Where had it come from? She dashed through the back office and into the now-empty shop floor-- one of the boys had left a bay door open, they'd catch hell from Terry about that for sure-- and squinted across the expanse of flat pasture land across the swollen creek behind the shop.

The featureless plain had sprouted a feature.

The knee-high hay growing in the field had been plowed down, flattened by chunks of steaming earth along a deep trench that led to...

"Oh my god."

Ignoring the rain, she crossed the footbridge and picked through the weeds toward the smoking crater. The rain petered out and stopped as she cautiously approached the area of disturbed earth, leaving only a steady wind that drove unimpeded across the field.

As she inched up to the rim of the crater, what looked like a hand shot out, planted itself firmly on the ground, and pushed up behind it a dark and immense silhouette. The angular, vaguely humanoid shape stood up and towered over her as she looked on in brain-numbed shock.

When it turned two glowing blue orbs to bear on her, _that_ was when she ran.

* * *

As first interspecies meetings went, it was something of a minor disaster. The little organic biped stumbled backward and fell to the sodden ground among the vegetation, and just as quickly was back on its feet and pelting away at what was probably a pretty fast clip for its kind.

"Wait! I mean you no harm!" the Autobot started to entreat, before realizing that the complex burst of electronic noise would be incomprehensible to the native creature, even if it were sentient at all. He started to follow, at a slower pace, not to catch up with the frightened organic, but only for the simple fact that there were some primitive constructs in that direction. He needed to get out of the open and find some manner of camouflage before the Decepticons arrived.

He had barely processed that thought when the panicked biped reached a distressingly ill-constructed bridge that spanned a rude canal roaring with rushing mud and water. Its footing on the wet wooden planks faltered, and it took a spectacular, wild fall. The Autobot sped up even before the organic's head smacked down onto the bridge, but he was too late to prevent it from slipping into the swiftly flowing water.

The Autobot leapt ahead, plunged into the water, grabbed the native biped with both hands and carefully lifted it free. The creature flailed, grabbing fitfully at his fingers, and then emitted a strange noise and spasmed repeatedly, expelling water from an orifice in its head, not unlike a clogged valve... the Autobot had a brief flash of guilt and worry. Even if this wasn't a sentient life-form, to have caused its end even inadvertently would be a truly bad way to start on this new homeworld.

Cradling the little being close, he quickly closed the distance to the constructs, entering the nearest one through a sizable portal. Within, the building was sheltered from the driving wind and-- what was this now? Full of curious two-wheeled machines. He ran a cursory scan with his diminished sensors. Mere devices, of the non-sentient variety. Vehicles of some sort, wheeled for terrestrial locomotion, some in such states of disassembly as to be wholly inoperable.

_Surely there was something here I can use_, he thought, readying his transcanner. But first, he found an empty space of floor and gently lowered the still-twitching organic down. He had had some experience dealing with organic life-forms, but none of them had been so... fragile-looking. Instead of armor, it apparently protected its soft exterior with a bizarre assemblage of woven fibers. Other than the external dampness caused by the the fall into the canal, there didn't seem to be any leaks. Beyond that, the Autobot had no idea how to ascertain if the being would be all right, and given the delicate appearance, he was beginning to doubt it.

With a frustrated internal rattle, he turned to scan the vehicles.

Too small...too awkward... too clunky... too _ugly_... and what by Primus was that one-wheeled lopsided pod-like thing supposed to be? The Autobot moved further into the building's interior, scanning as he went. He was beginning to grow disgusted with the primitive machines when his scans swept through into an adjacent chamber.

_That's better,_ he thought. The two-wheeled vehicles there were noticeably more advanced, sleeker, more powerful, and he almost settled on one before he saw _the_ one.

Now _this_... this was more like it!

He activated his transcanner with gusto, noting the few minor flaws in the chosen vehicle's otherwise superb design and correcting them. He added a few modifications to account for the slight difference in size, a few personal touches, and then he executed the transformation.

* * *

Nic sputtered, bracing herself on the cold concrete floor, coughing up what she hoped was the last of the muddy water she'd inhaled. The inside of her nose and the back of her throat burned, and she'd have the taste of prairie dust in her mouth for days, but she was alive.

Thanks to that _thing_.

The throbbing knot forming on her scalp made her suspect she'd imagined the whole thing. Giant metallic man-thing crashing down in the Kingston's field, plucking her out of the creek in two steel-cold hands? How else had she gotten all the way back into the shop, lungs still furious with her for mistaking rain runoff for air? She stood, still shaky from near-drowning, and pulled her dripping hair out of her face to look around.

No sign of the giant alien metal man, and the sounds of heavy stomping had stopped, but there were strange, inhuman tracks of wetness on the concrete floor, leading to the front.

Nic picked her way around the repair jobs toward the front showroom, thinking that this was how every good formula horror movie started and she should be running, but she had to be sure. She brought herself up short as a light flashed from within the showroom, followed by a strange grinding, whirring, thumping noise.

Then nothing. No noise, no funny shapes, no facehuggers leaping out at her...

Slowly, she peered around the doorframe into the showroom.

No giant alien metal men. Only shiny new motorcycles. And the shiny ridiculous Tomahawk, and another Tomahawk--

Wait.

Nic took a step into the showroom, absently rubbing the knot on her scalp. She'd been reasonably certain that there had been only one of those things sitting on display only an hour ago. One silver Tomahawk on its platform in the front corner.

This new arrival stood right in the middle of the room, blocking the aisle between the desk and a row of Hondas. It had the same general configuration as the first, but where the silver Tomahawk was outlandish, this blue and turquoise Tomahawk was sublime.

It was bigger, for one, not by so much as to make it awkward, and its body sleeker and more fluid. Its lines put her in mind of a bowstring pulled back, humming with potential energy just waiting to be released. Nic found herself approaching the shimmering machine, despite her dislike of motorcycles admiring the mysterious Tomahawk. She leaned in, noting that the familiar Dodge logo was missing. In its place was some sort of symbol she had never seen before.

Just as she was trying to puzzle the unfamiliar mark out, the bike _moved_.

Panels separated and slid back, the doubled wheels lifted and rotated flat. The bike's chassis shifted and split, and from somewhere within the body a _head_ appeared, armored plates sliding into place to form a swept-back helmet above two glowing blue eyes. The Tomahawk unfolded itself... and stood up.

Nic was certain she could hear her brain trying desperately to escape. She didn't even know she was backing away until she backed right into one of the Hondas, knocking it over and falling backward over it.

The ungraceful spill of course attracted the transfigured Tomahawk's attention. It looked down at her. She froze, still draped over the motorcycle.

Robot and woman stared at each other for several long, tense moments.

Somehow, it wasn't as tall as her first fear-stricken glances had told her. Nine, maybe ten feet tall; not the hulking monster she'd had in mind, but still large enough, now that she was looking clearly at it. It was covered in blue armor-like panels that seemed to be a jigsaw-jumble of the shape of the bike it had been. The four wheels were even arrayed on its back like some vehicular turtle-shell.

It shifted stance slightly, on two long, sleek legs, and regarded her from what she could only assume were eyes, a pair of deep-set lenses that glowed pale blue and clicked as some inner mechanism moved them about. The featureless area where a nose would have been suddenly lengthened, momentarily showing slits of some sort. It even had a mouth, Nic marveled, and a knob of a chin.

Slowly, it lowered itself to one knee, and all Nic could do was watch, enthralled, how it moved. Fluid and natural, like a living thing, even as the soft wheeze of some mechanical part (hydraulics, perhaps?) and the metallic tap of an armored knee hitting the tile floor broke the silence.

It reached out to her, and Nic jerked back, ready to leap to her feet and make a break for it. But the robot pulled back as well, leaning back and holding its hands up.

Carefully, Nic stood, trying not to make any sudden moves. Just as carefully, the robot leaned forward again, and slowly reached for the fallen Honda. Delicately, it set the bike upright again, and sat back, propping one arm across its upraised knee and regarding her expectantly. When the mechanoid didn't make another grab at her, she supposed the next move was hers.

With what? The Vulcan salute? "Klaatu Barada Nikto" and hope it didn't start leveling cities?

She tentatively raised a hand and gave it a small wave. "...uh, hi?"

It cocked its head, eye-lenses flicking busily. It then mimicked the gesture, two long chrome fingers and a well-articulated chrome thumb spread.

"_Uhh hiee?_" Its mouth even moved as it parroted her cautious greeting, in a voice that warbled and buzzed in strange chords.

"Wow," she breathed, and it seemed to grow a little bolder, leaning toward her even more. Its face, a complex assembly of blue panels and a streamlined helm that framed shiny chrome features, shifted, taking on an entirely new expression. Fascinated? Curious? Weirded out? Because that was certainly Nic's frame of mind at the moment.

"What are you?" Nic dared to step closer. Was there some kind of life-form inside the mechanical jumble somewhere, running the robot like a suit of armor? Or was it like a rover, remote-controlled from afar? "Is there someone in there?"

"W_hatarr yoo. Isstherrsumwaan inntherr?_" it repeated, mimicking the sounds but clearly not understanding. It blinked, shutters or something moving across its eye-lenses. Then it said something else, a series of buzz-hum-hiss and static and beeping noises.

She spread her hands. "Um... I'm sorry. I can't understand you." _And apparently the feeling is mutual._ It apparently came to the same conclusion, settling back and staring at her for a moment.

"No English, huh," Nic said, more to fill the otherworldly silence than anything else. "Why are you here?" She pointed at the Earth-born Tomahawk. "And... why do you look like that thing?"

It turned and looked in the direction she was pointing and seemed to perk up a bit. It tapped its chestplates, then stood up, making little 'wait wait' gestures that reminded her rather of her cousins prefacing some stunt with 'hey, watch this' just before everything went to tears and broken bones. She took a step back without thinking, but it only folded in on itself, panels flipping and wheels sliding, and there again stood the sleek blue and turquiose Tomahawk.

"Holy crap," was all she could say. And no sooner had the oath left her lips than the mechanical entity changed yet again, transforming back into its bipedal shape. It planted its fists on its hips and stood there before her, as if to say 'ta-daaaah!'

"Holy _crap_," she repeated, laughing despite herself. "What are you?"

Apparently taking her laughter as encouragement, it knelt and titled a shoulder down towards her. The section of armor bore the symbol she'd seen before, the one that had supplanted the Dodge logo. The robot indicated the symbol with a finger, then tapped its chestplate again.

Nic had to repeat her I-don't-know gesture. "Is that your name or something? I've never seen that mark before."

It tried again. Tap the symbol, tap the chest, hopeful nod.

Nic shrugged, shaking her head. "I'm sorry, I don't know what you're asking."

It slumped again. Nic felt bad for it even without knowing why, and she put a cautious hand on its upper arm, wishing she could do something more. This strange robotic visitor had, after all, saved her from drowning.

The phone rang, startling them both. Nic only jumped a bit, but the robot snapped up an arm, its hand receding around a cylinder in its forearm, which emitted an ominous hum as it leveled the tube at the ringing phone.

"Whoa! Whoa whoa, easy!" Alien or not, Nic knew a weapon when she saw one and she put up her hands and stepped back, in front of the humming cannon. "Take it easy, it's just a phone. Phone, okay? Phones are nice. _Nice_ phone."

The mechanoid glanced warily back and forth from her to the still-ringing phone, and almost reluctantly retracted the cannon, its hand re-forming at the end of its arm.

"Yes, that's right. We like phones." Nic picked up the receiver. "Darling Motorcycles," she recited out of long-practiced habit. _Motorcycles and giant metal robot men from outer space, how may I direct your call?_

"Nicole, what's taking so long?" Aunt Marie's voice asked. "Dinner's about to come out of the oven."

"Uh-- uh--" The robot was watching her intently. It was really distracting. "Yeah, I'm almost done here. I just-- I just gotta lock up."

"Well, hurry. There's another rain front coming in and it looks nasty. Don't want you driving in that."

"I'm leaving now. Keep it warm for me!" Nic hung up on her aunt. Hanging up on someone was a long-standing no-no in the Darling clan but she felt she could withstand a bit of finger-shaking in light of what was happening.

"Okay. Okay, um." She turned to the robot, which was still watching her. "You... need to hide. Hiiiiide, yes?" She tried to pantomime. So far body language was working, somewhat. "Oh, how the hell are you supposed to hide? Uh, I think maybe you can fit in the tool room... or the paint booth...?" She tried to beckon it to follow her back into the workshop.

In response, it changed once again into its Tomahawk shape, right next to the silver original. And sat there.

"No no no no. You're about as inconspicuous as a neon sign!" Nic walked over to it, wondering if it would object if she just grabbed it by the handlebars and wheeled it off. "You can't be a Tomahawk, there's only like nine of them-- Come on, get back up. Or roll, something." She dithered for a second and finally simply took the handlebars and tried to move the bike. It refused to budge.

"Ooohh." Nic threw up her hands. "I can't explain you sitting here, Mr. Roboto! I don't-- I've got to leave..."

She dashed into the accessory alcove and grabbed a ten-dollar tarp off the shelf. She unfurled it and draped it over the robot-bike to shield it from prying eyes at least from outside. This would have to do; she would have to get up an hour earlier and make it to the shop before anyone else the next morning. Of course, the robot could simply decide to get up and walk off during the night...

"I'll be back as soon as I can," she told the covered bike. "Just... hold on, okay?"

* * *

The native life-form had tried to comfort him, he mused wonderingly. And just now had helped him conceal himself. He knew he had found an ally in the chatty little organic. This fact alone did much to allay his anxiety.

Still, he would feel much better if he could find some way to get a message to Optimus Prime. He made an attempt at patching his wrecked communications system, but the damage was beyond his ability to repair. He could neither broadcast nor receive, and was down to contact and direct line interface methods only. And with his sensors largely crippled as well, he couldn't even tell if he was anywhere near the Prime's exact location. This wasn't a big planet, but being so cut off, it was all too large, and he was all too alone.

_No, not alone... precisely,_ he thought as he transformed to bipedal mode and set the covering aside.

By the way the organic had reacted to him, the Autobot had to assume that knowledge of his kind here wasn't widespread, if at all. Optimus and the others, how many ever there were, were keeping to standard stealth operating protocols, evidently. Protocols he had probably bent if not broken by revealing itself to the organic, but what other options did he have? Wander aimlessly sensor-blind and hope to stumble across a fellow Autobot, with a tangle of Decepticons doubtlessly making planetfall soon?

He realized, too, that he had no idea what Optimus and the others even looked like here. They could be anything. So could the Decepticons. Right now, the fragile little organic life-form was the only being he could trust.

He performed quick examination of the noisy handheld communication device the organic had used. It proved useless; it required some sort of tone-based code to do anything at all, and beeping randomly into the ridiculous thing promised to be a colossal and fruitless waste of time. He turned determined optics on the slightly less primitive computing device nearby. Scans showed one of the connectors was a hardline that was not used to power, but transmit data.

He was sure he looked rather foolish, huddled over the tiny platform and picking at the boxy little thing. At length he found the component he needed and established a proximity interface, giving only a cursory look at the device's own stored data. Binary code? Binary? _Really?_ Glitch-mice communicated in binary!

It all still meant nothing to him. So he made an attempt to send out a simple Cybertronian message along the transmission hardline. The already torpid flow of data promptly ground to a halt, and for a good half-joor the line buzzed fitfully, completely clogged.

Oops.

_Binary._ There was no way he would get a message through this way; his normal modes of communication were too much for this system to he was back to his uncertain alliance with the organic. And still had no more idea how to communicate with it than its devices.

It used sound in a manner that could only be language, he reasoned. It didn't use binary to speak, so there had to be some sort of translation method in order for it to make use of the device. The cipher, then, had to be either in the device, or somewhere in the sluggish datastream of the hardline. Patience, diligent observance, his long-dead mentor had often advised. Speed would not avail him here. So carefully, he interfaced with the device again, and listened intently to the pittering code. Being able to at least speak with the native would be a substantial advantage.

He would _make_ this work.

* * *

_Author's note: No, our motorcycle 'bot isn't anyone canon-- I saw a picture of a Dodge Tomahawk and couldn't help but wonder what sort of Transformer it would make. He gets a name next chapter. Google/Wikipedia the Tomahawk if you want to see a truly wild piece of engineering._

_But our incoming Decepticon buddies are canon, and some really nasty ones at that. Like three gigabytes of pissed-off in a two-gig hard drive, to paraphrase Rhinox._

_Nuts and bolts should start flying in the next installment, kiddies, so brace yourselves._

_Son of Author's Note, Revenge of the Edit: 12.23.08, I've expanded and revised the meeting scenes and shoved about 600 more tasty tasty words into this chapter from the old version. I felt some parts of this chapter were rushed and clumsy (at first writing, my inner eight-year-old was at the helm screaming GIANT ROBOTS SHINY MUST WRITE AND GET TO FUN PARTS). Also got rid of the genderless pronoun for the Autobot referring to himself because it was just confusing people. This is the only chapter that will get such a thorough edit, but I will be doing some minor edits to the other chapters for consistency and clarity._

_So if you're rereading, I hope you like the new cream filling. If this is your first readthrough, uh, enjoy the cream filling anyway._


	2. Whiplash

"Good morning, Fresno County! It's a balmy seventy-six degrees and not a cloud in the sky! This is _Maaaaaaaar_ty in the Morning with your wake-up call--"

Sam Witwicky, barely aware of his own name, let alone the time of day, extended a hand out from underneath the covers and slapped blindly at the surface of his bedside table. He managed to batter some comic books, his cell phone, and a plate bearing a few forlorn crusts from a long-devoured PB&J, but no clock-radio. He had made a point of banishing that totalitarian device to the closet for the duration of the summer. The DJ patter snapped off anyway, followed by a burst of Janet Jackson:

"Get up, get up, get up, get up and show-- you--"

Hauling himself up to squint out the open window, Sam let out a pained whine. "Bee, for god's sake, put Janet away!" he half-yelled, half-hissed, knowing that the Camaro parked in the driveway below would be able to hear him without any trouble. "What time is it?"

"Workin' nine to five," the voice of Dolly Parton twanged in response. "What a way to make a livin'--"

Sam shoved his head underneath his pillow. "Okay, okay, bring Janet back! I'm up already!"

"Samuel James," came Judy Witwicky's voice from the other side of the bedroom door. "That car of yours is going off again. Your father told you to get that fixed. We're getting complaints from the neighbors."

"Sorry, mom!" Sam yelled, and angled his head so that Bumblebee would be sure to catch his next words. "Must be some screws loose."

"Killin' me softly..." Bumblebee crooned back.

Sam literally rolled out of bed, crawled to his feet and scrounged up a pair of jeans, sneakers, and a t-shirt. "What's with all the chick music?" he muttered under his breath as he pulled them on. He'd had about four hours of sleep, but was quickly regaining brain activity by the second. He knew Bumblebee wouldn't be acting as if something had crawled up his tailpipe without a good reason.

"Sam, what is _with_ that radio?" asked his father as Sam descended the stairs two steps at a time. "It's like it has a mind of its own."

"Oh, that's just silly, dad," Sam blithely replied, stealing a piece of toast right off his father's plate. "Probably just a short in some wire somewhere. I'll get Mikaela to yank it out and give it a stern talking-to."

"That whole car gives me a funny feeling," Judy said, coming down the steps in a more civilized fashion. "Can't quite put my finger on it."

"I caught him talking to it," Ron commented into his coffee.

"You talk to machines all the time, dad."

"Swearing at the mower doesn't count, son. While we're at it, maybe you can explain--"

"Papa, don't preach," Bumblebee admonished via Madonna from outside.

Sam dashed for the door. "Hey, lemme go fix that! And I'm taking off, gonna see if Miles needs help with that thing."

"What thing?" Judy called after him.

"It's a thing! Bye!"

Both elder Witwickys watched as the screen door swung shut behind their rapidly vanishing son. Ron glanced at his watch.

"Nine-oh-eight AM. Who was that kid?"

Sam let Bumblebee drive himself out of the neighborhood. "This better be good," he murmured, yanking the lever to tilt the driver's seat back for a quick snooze. "You've got to be more discreet, Bee. I still don't know how long I can get away with not explaining your little GTO makeover."

No helpful musical phrase issued from the radio, but Bumblebee nudged the seat back up after only a few minutes, more or less destroying any possibility for a nap. The drive to the overlook was too short. A massive Peterbilt sat with engine idling atop the bluff, an odd sight for a traditional makeout spot, but certainly less odd than having it thunder up to Sam's house every so often.

Sam got out of the car, suppressing a yawn. "Morning, Optimus."

"Sam," intoned the Autobot leader's sonorous voice, and the thirty-foot robot unfolded smoothly into his bipedal form. "I am glad Bumblebee was able to rouse you before the sun reached its zenith."

"Human teenagers like to sleep past noon. It's a time-honored tradition among my people. So what's up?"

"We received a message not long ago from an Autobot in deep space who we assumed was in distress, but we were unable to pinpoint his location or identity before he was cut short," Optimus began.

"In distress? As in hurt or being chased by Decepticons?" _Please say just hurt,_ Sam thought. One city-flattening robot battle per lifetime was his limit.

"One can hope it is neither," Optimus replied, kneeling. "But we must prepare for both. I have spent the time since scouring your Internet and I believe I have found where the protoform made planetfall. A report from a farmer who found a crater in his pasture, and an eyewitness who called local police to report a giant monster of some sort. Both incidents were in the same area; this cannot be a coincidence."

"Where?" Sam asked.

Bumblebee's speakers hissed. "...heavy construction on 70 westbound just outside of Topeka, so plan your morning commute accordingly..."

"Kansas?"

"Approximately sixteen hundred miles east of our present location," Optimus confirmed. "As our scout, it is Bumblebee's duty to go ahead and assess the situation. Since the newcomer has not responded to any of our transmissions, we need to find him as soon as possible."

Sam turned and looked at the windshield of the bright yellow Camaro. "So how long you think you'll be gone?"

In response, Bumblebee transformed and looked down at him. "I want you to come along, Sam." The Autobot's voice, thick with a harsh buzz, was still on the mend; he used it only sparingly these days.

"Really? Road trip?" Sam brightened considerably.

"Time is of the essence, Sam," Optimus told him. "You are able to interact with your fellow humans and go where Bumblebee cannot. This mission will have a greater chance of success if you go with him. I was hesitant to ask, since you've made much of how you value this 'summer vacation'--"

"Are you kidding?" Sam grinned at the towering mechanoid. "The road trip is another one of those time-honored traditions. Better than sleeping in, seriously. Of course I'll help you find the new guy. I just need to-- hrm."

"What is it?"

Sam gave Optimus a grave look. "I'll have to clear it with my parents first."

From within the leader's body there came a rumble that was half _hmmmm_ and half diesel grind. Optimus Prime returned the boy's serious expression. "Do your best, Sam."

* * *

_"I have tracked the survivor's position on the planet. Transmitting coordinates."_

_"Rumble and Ravage will make planetfall well away from the Autobot's position. Track and engage. He must not be allowed to warn Optimus Prime."_

* * *

The clock next to her bed read eleven-twenty.

Nic had never gotten out of bed so fast. And a young woman who had never even dreamed of breaking the speed limit pushed it ten miles per hour over on the drive to the bike shop, swearing under her breath the whole way.

It was her own fault; she had stayed up until four in the morning doing research on the Tomahawk concept motorcycle, the bulk of the time spent downloading videos of the bike in action over the Darlings' satellite internet hookup. The weather made this task an exercise in patience as the link went up and down like an roller coaster. At one point, the signal crapped out completely and she spent about half an hour checking the connections and the dish itself before everything came back up. She had been curious as to why some alien machine would resemble that motorcycle, thinking perhaps she might find some clue in its specs and performance.

But she'd learned nothing other than the fact that it accelerated with a kick like a steroidal mule, and apparently no one could test it to its top speed because of poor aerodynamics, and the wind would tear a rider off the seat. Nic had been briefly amused by a daydream in which the silver Earthling Tomahawk sprouted legs and stomped grumpily off because nobody would ride it.

She was not amused now, though, by the thought of what was undoubtedly happening right now at the shop. Never mind the inexplicable appearance of a heavily-modified version of a Tomahawk, of which there were only ten in existence (the normal ones, at any rate), but what if Robot Boy poked its head up to say hi to her family or, better yet, a passel of customers? Her cousins would naturally think it was the coolest thing since the invention of the Atari, but she had a feeling her aunt and uncle would have significantly different feelings on the matter.

She pulled up into the gravel behind the shop and almost ran into the workshop, forcing herself to slow to a brisk but casual walk when Jacob looked up from half a Yamaha.

"Hey, cuz," the teenager greeted her, then returned his attention to the bike. Nic let out a quiet breath. Jake was acting normal. First indication that nothing had gone awry. "Ain't it your day off?"

"Is it?" Nic replied, breezing past him. "Slipped my mind. And don't say ain't."

She braced herself for a scene of Asimovian proportions in the showroom, but there were only motorcycles of the terran variety, several customers and gawkers of the silver Tomahawk, which was nicely doing its job of sucking people into the shop.

The alien, in either bike or bot form, wasn't there. Even the tarp she had shoplifted to cover it was missing.

Nic leaned against the door frame, not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. But where had it gone to?

...had it even happened at all?

"Nicole? Come over here, if you please." Uncle Terry had his Parent Voice on. Nic turned, seeing him standing at the front desk, standing over the shop's ancient Dell computer. A bookish man in a white business shirt was elbow-deep in its open case. She warily approached; Uncle Terry only took that tone with the boys these days, Nic herself having long outgrown the need to be glowered at.

"I was going to wait 'till I got home this evening, but since you're here... please explain me," her uncle said calmly, "why you felt the need to take our one computer apart last night?"

Nic opened her mouth to say something, registered what he was saying, then looked down at the CPU.

The case cover had been peeled back in the manner of a sardine can's lid, with clear pinches where a pair three-fingered hands had pried it open. The motherboard was in the process of being reconnected by the Geek Squad tech, and several more of the computer's inner components were laid out on the desk nearby.

Nic felt lucky her skin was already pale, so her uncle couldn't see the blood draining out of her face. Even so, she could swear her freckles would start losing definition any second now. "Um, I can explain...?"

"We talked about this, Nicole. We're not going to futz with the computer until we can afford to upgrade the whole thing. Now it's futzed up."

"Actually, sir, the components are intact, it just needs to be put back together..." the tech piped up, but Terry plowed on.

"What were you thinking? You didn't try to clockover it, did you?"

"That's overclock, Uncle Terry, and-- no-- I was just... trying to add more RAM. Make it a little faster, run smoother, you know? It's always locking up on me."

"And what did you use on the case? The jaws of life?"

Nic was warming up to her little lie. "The screws wouldn't come loose. The thing is so old--"

"_Nicole_." Terry pinched the bridge of his nose. "What in the world. This isn't like you."

She fidgeted, regressing in attitude by about five years.

"This is coming out of your paycheck."

Nic looked up at him and started to protest, but shut her mouth with a snap. "Okay. I'm sorry."

"You're twenty-four hours away from being a full-fledged legal adult, Nic," he said, his tone softening a little. "Please, no more last adolescent hurrahs, okay?"

"Yes. I'm sorry." Nic turned and stalked back through the workshop floor, ignoring Jacob's 'bye, cuz.' "Can't believe I just got owned by Buck Rogers's moped," she muttered, and stood at her car door, angrily picking through her keychain for the right key. The alien was gone, leaving Nic with a week's pay deficit for a souvenir--

Movement reflected in the car window caught her eye. A soft whirr-click from behind made her turn around, just in time to see a flash of bright blue peek around the corner of the garage. One glowing lens met her eyes, then retreated behind the building.

"There you are," she grumbled, and walked around the corner. There in the shade of tall weeds and scrawny trees crouched the robot, chrome sparkling in the spots of sunlight that filtered through. The tarp was crumpled up nearby.

"Okay, you-- the computer in the shop, geez!" she hissed. Nic knew it was useless to chastise the robot, given the language barrier, but she couldn't help it. "What did you do, eat the video card? Is that a light snack on your planet?"

"I am sorry for any trouble I have caused you," it said, quite clearly. "The other humans arrived before I could properly reassemble the data storage device."

Nic choked on her next words, her ire thoroughly dashed. She sputtered for a few seconds. "But-- last night you couldn't-- how did you learn English so fast?"

"Fast?" The blue mechanoid tilted its head. "This planet completed a quarter of its rotation before I could even _find_ the information I sought. And your device's communications module would not allow me to download more than a few bytes per second." Its voice, a sort of tenor that thrummed as if it were being spoken by steel guitar strings, was colorful with annoyance. No flat artificial monotone, as she might have expected a robot to speak with.

"Communications mod-- you mean the modem?" Nic blinked. "You downloaded English through _dial-up?_" _Well, there's your problem right there_, she mentally added. "Now maybe you can answer my questions."

"What I am," it said, "why I appear as I do, and why I am here? Those were your inquiries; did I translate correctly?"

"Uh, yes," Nic replied, blinking some more.

"Nic? Ni-i-i-i-ic?" It was Jacob's voice. Nic could hear his boots crunching into the gravel. "Hey, cuz, you still out here?"

"Shit!" Nic shot around the corner and blocked her cousin as he came out of the bay opening.

"You gonna be going by a Burger King?" Jake asked, typically oblivious to her agitated state. "I'm starving and Martin took the car."

"Drive your dad's."

"He won't let me, not after I broke the tail light out."

"Maybe you shouldn't have been trying to drive backwards through the neighborhood."

"Come on..."

"I can't run all over town today, Jake, I'm sorry. Got way too much to do!"

"What, seriously?"

_Damn my nonexistent social circle!_ "Yeah, just for that, you're gonna have to eat that mystery hot pocket in the freezer, smarty pants."

"Hey..." He leaned to look around her. "What's back there?"

Nic flashed a glance over her shoulder at the corner of the building and saw the end of the tarp fluttering out. She turned back to her cousin and gave him a push. "Stray cats. Really cute kittens, a whole bunch of them. Better not go back there, your allergies will murder you."

Sufficiently bullied, Jacob retreated back into the workshop, muttering allegations of drug use on her part. Nic walked back around the corner, slightly ill at how easily the lies were coming out. But the alternative, the truth? The robot was obviously hiding from humans, and probably had a good reason to, along with the reason it had chosen her to contact. She needed to learn those reasons before she dared invite more insanity through the front door.

In the weeds, the robot had withdrawn into its Tomahawk shape, somehow having flung the tarp over itself as it had done so, with only partial success: the back half of the bike was exposed.

"Oh boy." She couldn't help but chuckle. "Hey, um, it's just me. You still there?" She hesitantly lifted the edge of the tarp to peer into the headlight between the front twin wheels.

"I am here, human." The robot's voice came from within the chassis, clear and unmuffled.

"Look, we can't talk here." Nic looked around, across the flat, open land. She spotted a line of trees, a windbreak between pastures. "There's some trees over there. Um, tall vegetation. It should provide some cover. Can you... uh... drive yourself over there?" She wasn't about to hop on a motorcycle, talking or not.

For an answer, the powerful alien-augmented V-10 engine roared to life.

* * *

The Autobot waited among the trees, engine at a low nervous rumble, unable to follow the native's vehicle once outside its sensor range. Apparently the Earth vehicles were restricted to the designated pathways, and so unable to take the same route he had, simply plowing across the dense grass of the open plain. He made a mental note to look further into this planet's ecosystem when there was time. Earth was micron-for-micron packed with organic life, to such a degree as he had never before seen. Organic was by far the most fragile form of life in the universe; to thrive to this magnitude on this one backwater planet was truly impressive.

But for now, it had to focus on the task at hand: Locating Optimus Prime and others of his kind, and warning them of just what was bearing down on this little blue planet.

Auditory sensors picked up a distant rumble. Atmospheric conditions in this area were chaotic, constantly shifting; though the sky at present was clear, it was probably a simple storm looming out of sight. He also heard the snapping and rustling of footfall in the dead vegetative matter on the ground. The human-- and he now knew this one to be on the female side of the species' dimorphism, after observing the others-- was approaching along the line of trees. The Autobot waited until she was close to transform to bipedal mode, privately enjoying the naked awe she evidenced at the display. The fascination, it surmised, was very much mutual.

But then she was all business, folding her arms across her upper torso. "Okay. Spill."

"Spill?" The Autobot ran a quick diagnostic. "But I am not leaking."

The human's incredibly mobile face took on a strange expression. "I mean start talking."

He paused, rifling through the data he had wrenched from the miserly grip of the primitive communications module. "Spill, to divulge information. As if to spill one's fluid. I see. An idiot."

"What?" The human's voice took on a sharp pitch. "Did you just call me-- wait, do you mean _idiom_?"

Thought processes ground to a halt and hastily rerouted. "Yes, idiom. That was-- the wrong word." Nonplussed, he ran another diagnostic. Vocal communication systems were closely linked to spatial wave communications-- was it possible the corruption had spread? He isolated vocals from the damaged systems as a precaution. He could not afford to be unable to communicate with the human.

"Well, you only just learned the language." The human didn't seem to be as concerned by the slip. "Let's start at the beginning. What are you?"

"The language... is inadequate." The Autobot searched for some analogous terms that the human would understand. "I am an autonomous robotic life-form from a planet very far from here. In this language you might call it Cybertron."

"Cybertron. Ooooo-kay."

Unsure whether that odd utterance was positive or not, he simply plowed on. "I am here to join with others of my kind who have already arrived. In particular, our leader, Optimus Prime."

"Wait, wait-- there's more of you _already here_?"

He nodded. "I know not how many. I was attacked in space and my communications systems damaged. I am unable to get a message to them. I don't even know if they know I am here."

The human gave him a canny look. "Attacked... by whom?"

"Our enemies." Again he hunted for some suitable word. "Decepticons." he decided to be forthright with her. There was little point in oil-coating the truth at this juncture. "They are following me and will do everything they can to kill me before I make contact with Optimus Prime. And with my communications and sensors crippled, they may well succeed."

"Hold the frikkin' phone," the human barked. "Let me see if I get this straight. There's at least two factions of space robots out there fighting and you just brought the fight down here? Here, right on top of _me_?"

"If I could have gone directly to Prime," the Autobot retorted, "I would have-- as the situation stands, I only know that they are somewhere on this continent, and this planet is our new home. But I cannot protect my new homeworld-- _and its inhabitants_-- if I am scrap. I need your help."

The human sat down slowly on one of the trees, one that had somehow been toppled from its vertical position and now lay along the ground. For several long moments she said nothing. Then she looked up at him. "Why me?"

The Autobot knelt and carefully touched its fingers to her upper arm, briefly, in clear mimicry of the gesture she had used to comfort him the night before. "Sentience is rare," he said, "but kindness is even rarer."

She seemed... surprised.

"Do you have an individual resignation?"

She paused, her face again adopting that odd expression. "Do I have a what?"

"Your term of self-referral. A name."

"Oh! _Des_ignation. Yes, my name's Nic."

"Understood," the Autobot said, glaring inwardly at the faulty bit of data and correcting it. He hoped that would be the last of the errors; this was becoming embarrassing. Then, because the Cybertronian word that was his own name wouldn't be comprehensible, let alone pronounceable in her language, he settled on a term that was close enough and seemed to fit. He even liked the sound of it.

"You may call me Whiplash."

* * *

Nic had a lot to think about as she walked back down the tree line to her car, which was parked on a dirt road that ran between the pastures.

This was way beyond an artificial intelligence a la _I, Robot_. There was nothing artificial about it. The machine's intelligence-- its sentience-- was very real; no puppeteer pilot inside, it seemed. In fact, to call _him_ a machine felt increasingly inadequate. Though his touch had been cold metal, there was undeniable warmth in his words and movement. Whiplash was alive.

"I don't know where I'm going to hide you," she said over her shoulder to Whiplash, who was picking his way through the trees behind her.

"My chosen vehicle form will allow me to blend in," he assured her.

"Hate to tell you, Whip, but your chosen vehicle form does everything but blend. Can you do something a little more low-key? Say, a cruiser or a touring bike?" They reached the end of the tree line and she turned to face him. "Why the Tomahawk?"

"Its design is far more advanced than the other vehicles available, even given the corrections I had to make," Whiplash said, almost defensively, "much more suited to my needs."

"Your needs make you stand out like a sore thumb."

But the mechanoid would not be dissuaded. "It is still the appearance of a mere vehicle. And if the Decepticons confront me, my speed is my best weapon." He crossed his arms with a series of metallic squeaks. "No one outruns _me_."

_Hubris much?_ Nic thought, grinning despite herself. If she hadn't been convinced of Whiplash's sentience before, that little display of ego sealed it. "Well, don't say I didn't warn you. You gave the freakybike a heck of a facelift." Sighing, she put her hands on her hips, drumming her fingers as she looked the tall blue-and-chrome robot up and down. "So what now? Where do we start looking for your friends?"

"With my sensors down, they could be right next to me and I would never know." Whiplash's glowing lenses actually squinted. "Have you heard no reports of Cybertronians, even rumors?"

"Think I would have paid attention to giant robots on the eleven o'clock news. Sorry."

"Then they are in hiding, as I suspected. My kind can take the shape of nearly anything of equal size."

"And you don't know what shapes they took."

"Correct."

Nic blew air through pursed lips. "Gonna be tougher than I thought. But hey, nothing worth having is easy, right?" The phrase, a favorite of her father's, surprised her. She'd been trying not to think about that. "Follow me home. We'll figure out where to stash you when we get there."

She stepped out of the shelter of the trees and looked up and down the dirt road, then approached her off-white Civic. The thing always looked in need of a wash with that color, but she didn't feel like paying for a paint job when it wasn't the looks that mattered. As she slid the key into the ignition, she tried to think of possible hiding places for Whiplash. Hopefully none of her family had decided to pop back to the house for--

A flash of color in her rear-view mirror made her pause. There was another car coming up the road behind her, kicking up a cloud of dust as it went. Nic cast a glance into the trees, and she saw Whiplash transform into bike shape and back slowly away among the trunks and brambles. She fiddled with the steering wheel and waited for the other car to pass them.

It swerved to a stop just as it passed, sliding sideways across the dirt to block the road. Another Civic, only with a paint job and modifications that far exceeded the value of the actual car: a deep iridescent oil-slick purple, tinted windows, a truly ridiculous spoiler and some equally ridiculous spiral-cut spinner rims twirling with the aftermath of the wheels' momentum. Nic let out an irritated nasal sigh. _Some punk teenager with more money than taste and good sense._ She leaned on the horn.

The purple Civic's engine revved a couple times. Nic glared at it and gave her horn another couple taps. The windows were so darkly tinted she couldn't even see a silhouette of the driver.

"I do not have time for this." She opened her door and half-stood out of the car. "Hey, Pimp My Hooptie-- get lost!"

The purple Civic's engine cut off.

"_What_," snarled a shrill whine of a metallic voice, "did you just call me?"

And it stood up.

This new arrival was much bigger and bulkier than Whiplash-- being a car rather than a motorcycle, she supposed it had to be-- and before she could react, it lifted one purple-armored arm, the limb reconfiguring as she watched into a wide cylinder. A massive piston pulled back.

Nic's brain screamed warnings at her and she jumped away from the car just as the car-bot drove its tube-arm down onto the hood of her car, the piston slamming through the hood and engine and into the ground below. The resulting tremor jolted her feet out from underneath her, and she fell roughly on the dusty, hard-packed dirt.

"Oh, shit," she said, her voice incongruously calm. She rolled over just in time to see the car-bot level its other arm at her, this one a cannon like the one Whiplash had brandished at the phone. Only bigger.

"Are all you fleshbags so mouthy?" it inquired nastily, and the cannon spun. She could see a hellish glow forming within. Nic scooted backwards on hands and butt and feet.

But it was Whiplash's cannon that fired, the ball of energy smacking broadside against the car-bot's head. Whiplash himself came flying out of the trees only fractions of a second after his shot, slamming onto the car-bot with a clamor of metal on metal.

"_Nic, run!_" Whiplash yelled at her, clinging spider-like to the car-bot as it twisted and tried to scrape him off.

She didn't have to be told twice. She scrambled to her feet and took off into the pasture, heading for the bike shop. She hadn't gotten far when she dared a quick look back over her shoulder, and she saw the car-bot grab Whiplash roughly by the wheels and hurl him ass-over-fender down the dirt road.

Nic stopped running. "Whiplash!"

"Typical," car-bot spat, replacing the piston-arm with a hand. "You Autobots can't land on a planet without getting your servos in a snit about the local wildlife. Watch out, might step on a bug! What a disaster that would be, eh?" And it swung its blazing red optics to glare at Nic. "Billions of these things. Planet's just lousy with 'em. I calls that an infestation."

Whiplash rattled to his feet and brought both arm cannons up. "Your quarrel is with me, Rumble. Let her go."

"I was gonna," 'Rumble' retorted, "but then the little pest went and insulted me. You don't think I'd just let that slide, do ya?" Again the cannon swung in her direction.

Whiplash was again faster on the draw, unleashing a barrage that pummeled Rumble backward. The Autobot advanced as he fired, and as he came closer, he withdrew his cannons and extended from each arm a pair of long, slender blades from either side of his curled fists. Without giving Rumble a chance to regain his footing, Whiplash again leapt, his legs lengthening as if spring-loaded to propel him blades-first into his opponent.

Rumble twisted with surprising adroitness for a creature of his bulk, and managed to make one set of blades glance off his armor with a spray of sparks, but the other set struck home, piercing into the gears and guts of his abdomen. They didn't sink in far, however; whatever these Cybertronians were made of, it was some seriously stern stuff-- or Whiplash just wasn't all that powerful.

"Dammit, dammit, dammit..." Nic recited the litany of I-am-about-to-do-something-really-stupid, and ran back to the road, crouching behind her spectacularly dead car.

"YOU SCRAWNY LITTLE--" and what Rumble said next was a tangle of electronic grinding and hissing. Nic had a pretty good guess at what it might have been. Rumble again snatched Whiplash by a wheel, but instead of tossing him, dangled him out at an arm's length. Nic watched in horror as Rumble again drew back that piston.

She picked up a rock and threw it as hard as she could. It ricocheted off Rumble's helmet with a hollow _clang!_

It was as if time itself had locked up. Rumble's piston arm froze. Whiplash stopped struggling to pry himself loose. Both robots slowly turned their heads to stare incredulously at her.

Rumble spoke. "You have _got_ to be kidding me."

The moment was all Whiplash needed. One leg whipped up and connected with Rumble's face, and the hand on his wheel released. Whiplash dropped, his cannons out before he hit the ground, a more powerful charge building before he fired this time. Rumble reeled and toppled backward, knocked nearly off his feet by the force of the point-blank blast.

"_Nic!_" Whiplash was backing away, cannons still trained on Rumble's fallen form. "_Get on!_" He shifted to bike form and gunned his engine.

Two years ago, Nic had sworn she'd never get on another motorcycle.

Some oaths were meant to be broken.

No time to hesitate, no time to dither about lack of helmet, she leaped astride the seat and took the handlebars in death grip. She braced herself for the mule-kick of his acceleration but he took off with surprising smoothness, more than up to the task of handling a metric crapload of torque with unearthly finesse. They sprayed Rumble with dirt and pebbles as the purple-armored robot flailed to get up.

Nic could hear, over the roar of Whiplash's engine, the now-familiar sound of a robot changing forms. A glance back confirmed that Rumble had resumed the shape of the Civic and was screaming down the road after them.

"He's coming!" Nic shouted over the wind.

"Not for long," was Whiplash's firm reply, and he continued accelerating.

Nic had to close her eyes against the onslaught of wind. She hugged the chassis for literal dear life, praying Whiplash would not test his top speed with her on board. Rumble, fast though he was, quickly fell further and further back. She had no trouble making out his parting words, though:

"YOU ARE FOOD FOR RUST, AUTOBOT, DO YOU HEAR ME? THIS ISN'T OVER!"

"Not by a long road," Nic murmured worriedly to herself. If Whiplash heard it, he didn't respond, instead maintaining his velocity further out into the flat Kansas countryside.

_Not by a long road at all..._


	3. The Rumor Mill

_You stupid, slagging glitch-infested waste of processing,_ Whiplash thought, _malfunctioning, gearslipped, underlubricated idiot!_

At this point, he didn't know whether he was referring to himself or Rumble. Possibly both.

Of course the Decepticon had found him-- just because he couldn't scan didn't mean he couldn't _be_ scanned. With Nic clinging to his back as he tore down the hard-packed dirt lane, he cranked his dampening field on full-blast. Let them try and track him now.

Only when his optics could no longer see Rumble's dust cloud behind them did he dare to slow down and veer off into the field next to the road, letting the tall grass-like vegetation swallow them up. As he came to a stop, he felt Nic let go and slide off to one side.

"A rock," he said, converting to bipedal mode and crouching over her. "You threw a _rock_ at a Decepticon." He replayed the memory in his drive, half to confirm that it had actually happened, half because it was so blasted amusing.

"--had to--" Nic lay sprawled on her back, flattening the vegetation beneath, creating a human-shaped hollow. She was taking in and expelling air at an alarming rate, and he could detect tremors running through her entire body. Whiplash pushed his crippled scanners to their limit, but he still had no idea just what constituted lasting harm to a human.

"You are in distress. Are you damaged?"

"No, no," she gasped between breaths, shakily sitting up. "Just a-- little fazed."

"That was a very foolish thing to do. Rumble would have thought nothing of killing you." Whiplash privately marveled at the human's bravery-- or foolhardiness. No natural weapons, a frail and unprotected organic body, and _tiny_-- and she had stood up to Rumble.

"Just because I called him a hooptie." Nic drew her knees up and rested her forehead on them. "What a jerk. And he trashed my car!" She grabbed a handful of dry, stringy vegetation and tossed it, flopping back prone. "I still have payments left on that thing!"

Whatever that meant. "We need to find Optimus Prime as soon as possible. If Rumble is here, his allies will not be far behind."

"We need to go back into town, then," she said. "I can hunt down some info on the Internet, if there's any to be had. Is it safe? I mean, will Rumble attack us in a crowded place?"

Whiplash carefully considered this. It was highly likely that Rumble had been instructed to keep a low profile; otherwise, the Decepticon wouldn't have bothered with an Earth disguise. Perhaps a populated area would deter Rumble from starting another... well, rumble. "It should be safe, for now. But we must erudite our efforts."

"...I think you mean expedite."

_Pit, not again!_

* * *

"Where did we find this? YouTube?"

"Yes, Mr. Secretary. Some fourteen-year-old with a camera-phone. We've replaced the video on the site itself with something pixilated to hell, so that should keep things quiet for now."

Secretary of Defense John Keller watched the already grainy and shaky video with thinned lips. Twenty seconds long, it showed two distinct metallic forms in combat. Judging by the size of a small white car parked nearby, the larger purple one was roughly the size of NBE-2, the one which called itself Bumblebee. The other one, bright blue, was a little harder to make out, due both to the low quality of the video and the speed at which it moved. The two mechanoids kicked up a cloud of dun-colored dust as they wrestled, intermittent flashes of light punctuating the scene. Towards the end of the clip, there was an abrupt pause in the action. Just as the blue one resumed the fight, the clip ended.

"Shot on the outskirts of Topeka, Kansas."

"Do we know who these guys are?" Keller asked. This was how it had started last time. One little robot brawl.

"They don't match any of the other NBE descriptions."

"Have Miss Madsen meet me in my office, and contact Captain Lennox. We need to arrange a meeting with Optimus Prime."

* * *

"That... was suspiciously easy."

Sam tossed his duffel bag into Bumblebee's back seat. The yellow Camaro wondered what kind of story his charge had had to spin to get his parents to release him for this expedition. Bumblebee found some apt lyrics and flicked his sound system on.

"What did you say, what did you say, what did--"

"Camping trip with some friends." Sam scratched his head. "Had to swear a no-nookie oath and practically sign it in blood, but I guess sometimes the simple stuff works."

"Technically true," Bumblebee rasped with his own voice, his recalcitrant vocal capacitor sending out painful spikes of errant impulses. Ratchet had told him to give it a rest; although the AllSpark had kick-started his irreparable voice, restoring the intricate mechanism to full functionality had to be done in many stages, and using it in this state would set the schedule back.

Still, it felt good to stick it to Megatron, who had sworn Bumblebee would never utter another word. Every syllable another small victory. And besides, to hear him speak seemed to make Sam happy, and that was reason enough to risk the medic's wrath.

"Okay, let's get this party started!" Sam hopped in, and Bumblebee cheerily zeroed in on an 80's station, much to the young human's dismay. Bumblebee couldn't imagine what Sam found so objectionable about this music; it wasn't that old, and the Autobot rather liked the genre called _electronica_, with its precise, if simplistic, synthetic formulae. Its younger offshoot _techno_ was also somewhat appealing, but didn't have quite the same cleverness, and tended to be too repetitive for his tastes.

Instead of heading for the interstate, Bumblebee pulled up to a bus stop, where a lone human female lounged on a bench. It took Sam only a moment to recognize who it was, and _there_ went the pheromone spike. When Bumblebee had first come to Earth almost five years ago, it didn't take the Autobot long to figure out that weird chemical reaction between the two halves of the human race, a suspicion that Ratchet only confirmed. Already a highly social species to begin with, humans seemed happier when paired off.

"Mikaela?"

Mikaela Banes pulled down her sunglasses and grinned as the passenger side door swung open. "So are we off to see the wizard or what?"

"How'd you know?" Despite the question, Bumblebee was pleased to note that Sam didn't object.

Mikaela held up her phone. "Bumblebee hacked Sprint and texted me. First text message I've ever gotten where everything's spelled correctly."

Sam leveled a look at the dashboard. "And yet you pull me out of bed with your neighborhood-rattling stereo."

Bumblebee meeped innocently. _It's just more fun._

"You sure you want to come along?" Sam asked as Mikaela deposited her bag next to Sam's in the back seat. "I mean, this could take a couple days and I wasn't planning to shower the whole time."

"I expect you will now," she replied, pulling the door closed.

"Maaaaybe." Sam's pheromones betrayed his nonchalance as Bumblebee headed for the highway. "Just don't blame me if I forget and get all stinky and sweaty."

"Promises, promises." Mikaela rolled her eyes.

Bumblebee obligingly pumped out some Barry White.

* * *

A logo-festooned styrofoam cup of plain black coffee sat untouched on the counter nearby, steam still wafting from the hole in the lid. Nic didn't touch it. She felt she had enough adrenaline in her system at the moment to keep her going 'till Doomsday, and a single sip of caffiene would make her molecules vibrate apart. She had only bought it because Internet access was for paying customers only, and she didn't feel like fighting with the manic satellite connection at home. No, for this, she wanted a nice, fast, uninterrupted T1 line.

Not for the first time, she wondered if anybody at Google ever looked at the search terms used, out of curiosity. She was sure her current string was making her look like a loon.

Or someone with a serious robot fetish: _alien robot "giant robots" sentient machine vehicles_ and a thesaurus's worth of synonyms thrown in for good measure.

It took her the better part of a quarter-hour to weed out all the shrine sites to obscure badly-animated 80's cartoons, sites about geek engineer tournaments to see whose remote-controlled droid could beat up whose, and sites offering cars for sale. (The video of a car commercial in which a silver coupe transformed and did a little breakdance first startled her, then nearly gave her a fit trying not to laugh. It was only some decent but telltale CGI at work, even if one could only wonder at where the inspiration had come from.)

The real meaty information was buried in message boards and blogs, some newly defunct and readable only by search engine cache. She made notes on napkins, noting even the oddest or unlikeliest-seeming mention. She could sort it later with Whiplash, who would know better what to look for. Though she was getting a good feeling about a recent rumor upswing of past months. Mention of 'military supermachines' came up with a marked regularity, sandwiched by government-is-reading-my-brainwaves conspiracy chatter. Talk of military or government experiments going haywire and destroying whole city blocks had become almost trendy in the blogosphere.

Nic glanced out the window to where Whiplash was parked outside, right next to a banged-up Suzuki GKW (an Uncle Terry-ism that meant God Knows What). The juxtaposition between the ratty, skeletal motorcycle and Whiplash's shining, sky-hued streamlined shape was more than a little funny. And, true to her earlier warning, her robot friend was attracting a bit of a crowd. She decided she had gathered enough notes, crammed the napkins into her bag and came out of the cyber-café just in time to catch a middle-aged man trying to sling a leg over Whiplash's seat.

"_Hey._ Off my bike, if you please." Tone appropriately sharp. Stance and gait crisp and businesslike. Bluster enough like this and nobody questioned you.

The man, who hadn't been limber enough to get his leg over the bike's girth anyway, stared dumbly at her. "This your bike?"

"I believe that's what I said. You go around messing with other people's property like that all the time?"

"I just wanted to see how it felt. I've never seen anything like it. Where'd you get it?"

"Custom, one-off. Built from scratch." She delivered her most disapproving moue, hopping astride said unique motorcycle. "Brand new, too, so I'd appreciate it if you asked before manhandling it."

"I'll give you five thousand dollars for it."

Nic stared at him, the original Tomahawk's better than half-a-mil price tag flashing through her mind. "Sir, I'm insulted." _...on Whiplash's behalf!_

Just then the Suzuki's owner appeared and came to a dead halt when he saw Whiplash. Nic could see the young man's eyes dart from his bike to the alien Tomahawk and then come to rest on her. She decided she'd better get moving before he proposed marriage.

She squeezed the clutch and fumbled with her foot, long-neglected habit coming to the surface. Her composure nearly crumbled when she realized he didn't have a shifter. Come to think, he didn't even have an ignition switch... or fuel cutoff...

Fortunately he started his engine on his own, likely realizing what she was trying to do. The sudden chainsaw-from-hell noise made the handful of spectators jump back, and she slipped out of the parking lot and into the light early-afternoon traffic. Whiplash was a preternaturally smooth ride-- each wheel's independent suspension made every bump and dip in the pavement disappear. She strongly suspected even the original Tomahawk wasn't this easy a ride.

Of course, it helped when the bike had a literal mind of his own.

With a start, she realized she was _steering_ him. _He has to be letting me steer. I mean, he could take control if he wanted, right? Still, I'm... _manipulating_ him. This is so bizarre. I'm going to wake up any minute now._

She headed for the Eyesore.

It had been intended to be a fancy new office building near some of the more affluent apartment complexes of Topeka. For some reason or other, construction had stopped nearly half a year ago, and it sat there, a big empty half-finished shell, a monstrous pimple in a perfectly coiffed neighborhood. Stuck in zoning purgatory, the way she'd heard it, and couldn't be completed or demolished until some committee or other decided what to do. Kids would use the Eyesore for skateboarding or raves until police kicked them out, occasionally a homeless person would squat for the night before being run off by the rich residents.

Right now, Nic was counting on the privacy. She directed Whiplash around the construction fence at the perimeter of the property, ducking through a gap when she was sure nobody was looking. She rode right into the bare building's lobby, through the gaping doorless entryway.

Dismounting, she looked around in the dusty dimness. The only eyes watching them belonged to the lopsided happy-face spray-painted on the nearby cinderblock wall, next to the cheerful sentiment '_JAYHAWKS SUK!_' Whiplash's engine cut off. "Okay," she said. "You can come out now."

Nic had a feeling she'd never get tired of seeing this-- the impossibly complex, impossibly graceful conversion from motorcycle to robot. Even before the last armor panel slid into place, he was looking around, with what looked like a frown.

"Surely this derelict is not your residence."

"No, but we can talk here." Nic unslung her bag and dug out the sheaf of scribbled-on napkins. "Whiplash, you don't mind-- I mean, you're not, I dunno, offended that I was steering you?"

He looked at her, the frown disappearing. She was beginning to get the hang of reading his rather subtle expressions. "Why would I be? You know this place; I do not. You knew to come here."

"Can't argue with your logic," she replied, gratified by his trust. She held up the napkins. "So let's find your friends."

She found a clear space among the piles of abandoned construction materials and trash. The soft blue glow of his eyes played over the napkins as she laid them out on the dusty floor. "Not much data," he murmured, crouching.

"More than I expected to get, frankly. But still, I'm willing to bet that this is at least three-quarters crazy. We get a lot of that on this planet." She made a stab at sorting them by geographic location. "Okay, Roswell-- robots going around eating cows and other livestock."

Whiplash made a derisive _zrrrrrng_ noise. "My kind does not ingest organic material."

"Bunk, then," she said, tossing the napkin aside. She made a mental note to ask just what he did eat, if at all-- and if she needed to plug him in at night or something... "Hoover Dam, a jet grew legs and started shooting up the place."

"That," he said darkly, "sounds like a Decepticon."

"This was a couple months ago..." Nic poked at the napkin, chewing on her lip. He had said that others were already here. "Maybe in a fight with one of your friends?"

"Possibly." He didn't sound pleased with the idea. "Or attacking humans. Rumble is not alone in his opinion of non-Cybertronian life."

Xenophobic space robots. Lovely. "And what is your opinion of non-Cybertronian life?"

He drew back, as if insulted she had even asked. "If it is sentient, it deserves to live. I value life no matter its origin. Autobots do not inscribe to the Decepticon philosophy."

"Subscribe?" The corners of Nic's mouth twitched. Whiplash's head turned aside and he emitted another mechanical noise, possibly a word in his own native electronic language. "Why do you keep doing that?"

"The language data I acquired is corrupt somehow." He reached out and tapped the Hoover Dam napkin with a metal finger. "Please, continue. Your manual glyph system seems to deviate from the accepted common format and I can't decipher it."

It was probably the nicest way anyone had ever told her that her handwriting was messy. She moved the Hoover Dam tip to one side. "Okay... a year ago in Fresno, a yellow beater driving around with nobody behind the wheel. Cars don't drive themselves."

"Agreed." That napkin joined the other.

UFOs abducting the elderly and replacing them with robotic duplicates in Chicago: Definite no.

A 'haunted' big-rig truck sighted in Nevada: Strong possibility.

'Demolition' of a city block as coverup for a military war-game involving 'walking tanks and helicopters': another mutter about Decepticons from Whiplash.

Fifteen napkins in, a pattern was emerging. Southern Nevada, someplace called Mission City, and scattered spots trailing northwest into California. "Why does all the insanity migrate out west?" Nic asked out loud, ripping up the false-lead napkins. "So what do you need now?"

Whiplash stood, gazing off into the dusty gloom of the Eyesore's lobby. "A guide."

"You want me to come with you?"

He was silent for a moment, save for some soft mechanical rattles and clicks and whirrs from deep within his body. "Optimus Prime said in his message that this planet is our new home. That we were not alone. I have been alone for so long... and even now, I am so close to others of my kind I should be able to hear their voices, but damaged as I am, I might as well be on the other side of the galaxy." His blue lenses focused on her. "I know nothing about this world. I do not have the luxury of wandering on my own, finding my own way. The message I must deliver is too vital to take the risk that the Decepticons will find me. I realize I may be asking a great deal of you--"

Nic's cell phone tweedled brightly. She jumped, the sound of it sharp and startling next to Whiplash's soft, sad voice.

"Oh for... Uncle Terry, your timing is atrocious..." Her finger poised on the green button, she looked up at Whiplash. "Sorry, just give me a sec, Whip." At least the phone call would give her time to think about going cross-country on an alien motorcycle.

"_NICOLE!_"

She winced, pulling the earpiece slightly away. "Uncle T--"

"Nicole, where are you?! Are you all right? What happened to your car, why didn't you call us?!"

Nic groaned. She'd forgotten about her poor lobotomized Civic, just sitting there for the world to see. "I'm-- I'm okay, Uncle Terry, I'm in town with a friend."

"Your car is out by the Kingstons' field with a _hole_ through the engine big as my head!" Terry continued. "Your aunt's calling the hospitals. What happened? Were you in an accident? Why didn't you _call_--"

"I'm fine, I'm not hurt," she assured him. So much for swanning back to the house as if nothing had happened. "I can-- I can explain it." Whether it would be the truth or another quick lie, she had no idea.

"Where are you? Are you sure you're all right?" Terry demanded, some of his hysterics dying down.

"Yes, I'm _fine_-- I was at a café with a friend," she repeated. Terry said something in response, but his words were masked by a burst of high-pitched static. She plugged her free ear and frowned into the phone. "Uncle Terry? He-hello? Reception's really bad. Can you hear me?"

More squealing static, becoming so shrill she had to cut the call. Reception was usually pretty good within Topeka proper, likely the trouble was with wherever Terry was.

"Your unit commander?" Whiplash inquired.

"My uncle, same thing. He found my car where Rumble left it. I'd better call my aunt before she turns out the National Guard." Nic thumbed through her phone's call list and dialed Aunt Marie, only to wince as more of the static shrieked into her ear. With a sigh, she shut the phone and turned to Whiplash to ask for a ride home.

The words were never spoken.

The cinderblock wall directly behind her exploded. Whiplash darted in and swept her off the floor and out of the way just as the debris pounded across where she had been standing. Sucking in a lungful of dust, Nic grabbed Whiplash's fingers for support and coughed.

"What the--"

Another blast filled the lobby with billows of dust and flying debris. Part of the ceiling crumbled and rubble fell, blocking the daylight that had streamed in through the open doorway. The newly-created hole in the wall was now the only exit, and standing abreast of it, iridescent purple gleaming like some monstrous demonic scarab, was--

"I always seem to find you in the _classiest_ places."

Rumble.


	4. Getting Back On

"I really wish you had consulted with us before you laid out the welcome mat." Keller eyed the immense face that filled the screen before him. On the nineteen-inch laptop screen, Optimus Prime looked positively cramped, even though in reality he had plenty of room in the Air Force hangar being used as a temporary contact point.

"I apologize if I have created any undue trouble for you, Defense Secretary Keller," the massive mechanoid said, "but I will do whatever is in my power to save what is left of my people. The more of us that are in one place, the better our chances to defend against another Decepticon incursion, should one occur."

"Speaking of which--" as if the nation's immigration problems weren't complicated enough-- "We discovered this video taken in Kansas earlier today. Do you recognize either of these individuals?"

The plate-sized blue lenses irised narrow and flicked to one side as a window popped up on both ends of the teleconference. Optimus Prime seemed to almost scowl as the twenty-second fight played out.

"They have taken local camouflage. Without direct communication or a close-range scan, I can't say for certain who they are. We already knew of one Autobot newcomer," Prime said. "I have sent our scout ahead to that very location, but this news changes the situation."

"How so?"

"The newcomer hasn't responded to any of our attempts at contact. This skirmish you uncovered only worries me more. I am going to mobilize all Autobots." A pause. "Ironhide reports that Captain Lennox wishes to accompany him, if you are amenable."

"I prefer it, actually," Keller replied. Having a human representative present to act in the government's interest went a long way to making him feel better about this particular mess. Not that he would sleep any easier tonight at any rate. At least he could trust Lennox to give him a full and concise report, rather than whatever the Autobot leader decided was worth telling.

"Rest assured, Defense Secretary Keller, that if this is an offensive by Decepticon agents, we will send them back with-- what's the phrase? --with their tails between their legs." Optimus Prime's tone was all business. "If they are not too damaged to run."

* * *

Whiplash turned, taking the brunt of Rumble's barrage across the wheels mounted on his back. Pain lanced through his circuits as one of the tires blew. Repair systems automatically kicked in, and he blocked neural feedback from the damaged area. 

"Holy shit," Nic, cradled in his arms and clinging to his chest armor, coughed when Rumble stopped.

_Consecrated excrement?_ Whiplash filed the interjection away as another possible misfire of his corrupt language data and set Nic down. "Stay behind me," he told her, turning to face Rumble.

"You know, shortstack," the Decepticon said in an almost conversational tone, cannon twirling idly, "This just ain't fun any more. Downright boring, you are. Used to be we'd have your lot backed into some little asteroid or moon, and we'd have us a real party before you'd cut and run. Give us a nice chase, we'd catch up, and--"

"Do you never grow weary of the sound of your own vocal processes?" Whiplash wasn't about to let Rumble work up to the really nasty stuff. Not in front of Nic. "Truly pitiable when _Bluestreak_ calls you a prattler."

Rumble took a threatening step towards them. If Whiplash could get him away from the opening, Nic could make her escape, and soon after Whiplash would make his. It was a dance that was getting very old; he had to grudgingly agree.

"You're slipping, Autobot. Not so brave without all your buddies around you. And hey, Bluestreak got what was coming to him." Rumble brought up to bear one of the circular plates that had been set in his wheels, and drew the spinning mechanism down his chestplate, right down the middle. "The boss split him open real nice. You remember that, don't you?"

So much for keeping away from the nastiness. Whiplash's blades extended of their own accord, his internal pump pressure rising. This wasn't going to work, the two of them trading unpleasantries. It used to be such a sound tactic-- annoy the enemy into doing something stupid, lead them into ambush or let them make some colossal mistake that the rest of his unit could then exploit-- but again, Rumble was right. The rest of his unit wasn't here. Whiplash simply was not designed for sustained, direct heavy combat alone.

The thought hadn't crossed his processor to bemoan this fact until now.

"I thought he said he was bored," Nic piped up, standing beside him with arms crossed. "So is he going to start something or stand there and reminisce? Because now _I'm_ starting to get bored."

Both mechanoids turned incredulous optics on her again, Rumble more in exasperation in counterpoint to Whiplash's horror.

Nic continued blithely, speaking to Whiplash as if the Decepticon weren't even there. "Personally, I don't think he can take you, not really. Guys like him talk big, but, well... that piston-thing in his arm? Definitely compensating for a shortcoming or two."

Whiplash, blades snapping back in, only just managed to grab her and leap clear before Rumble's shot hit. He spun about and deposited Nic behind a stack of blocks, some sort of stone aggregate material. "Have you suffered total cognitive function failure?" he demanded.

"It got him away from the hole," she pointed out, standing on tiptoe to look over the blocks.

Sure enough, Rumble was stomping through the settling dust cloud, cannon powering up for another shot. "I dunno how you can stand to be around that thing," the purple Decepticon growled. "What possible use could it be to you? Can't be the scintillatin' conversation." He fired.

Whiplash sidestepped behind the blocks and crouched as low as he could over Nic. The stack of blocks blew halfway out, spraying them with dust and gravel. Before he could tell her to run for the opening, she darted out under the cover of the dust cloud and was quickly out of his sensor range. He stood, priming the cannon in his right arm and extending blades from his left.

The glow of Rumble's optics gave him his target. The Autobot surged forward, letting a shot fly. Rumble ducked, but it had the intended effect. Now Nic could escape.

_Pay attention to me, Decepticon. I'm not throwing rocks._

Blades swinging, Whiplash leaped. With a satisfying _shrrrrnnch! _his blades bit deep into Rumble's shoulder underneath an armor panel, puncturing cables and knocking cogs out of alignment. A painful, but not debilitating strike. Rumble howled with fury, scrabbling as Whiplash used his face as a handhold and climbed atop him.

"Slagging little glitch! _Get off me!_"

"Ask politely," Whiplash replied, and slipped another blade out, thrusting straight down behind Rumble's chestplate. More cables nicked. A lubricant line sliced down part of its length and spurted. Nowhere near Rumble's spark, of course. Whiplash never had that sort of luck.

"GRAAAAH!" Whiplash didn't have enough time to pull out before Rumble reached up, grabbed Whiplash by a leg and slung him violently away. The blade, still wedged down in Rumble's chest, snapped off.

Whiplash slammed into a wall and dropped to the floor. Picking himself up, he looked at the quarter-length broken blade in disgust and retracted it. That would never repair on its own. He looked up as his opponent plodded over to him. Rumble picked delicately at the broken length of metal until it came free, dripping with lubricant.

"Them's the breaks." Rumble made a show of examining the blade, held pinched in two fingers as if it were something especially foul. Then he chuckled and hefted the blade in a firmer grip. "Now it's time to break _you_."

He swatted aside Whiplash's three remaining blades as the Autobot attempted to attack. Rumble came in fast, seizing the much smaller Whiplash by the abdomen and slamming him back against the wall. With another nasty laugh, Rumble jammed the blade through the mechanism of Whiplash's shoulder, somehow missing all the important parts but pinning him neatly to the wall.

"You're all alone," Rumble cackled. "See you in the Pit, Autobot."

Whiplash kicked, glancing a blow off Rumble's arm. "You fir-_aaaaaiiigh!_"

Rumble used both hands to pry apart the panels of Whiplash's chestplate. Internal alarms screamed. Pain that couldn't be overridden lanced white-hot through his circuits. His spark chamber clenched and flared, exposed.

That was when a chunk of debris came sailing in through the dusty air to peg Rumble square in the back of the head.

"He's not alone!"

Rumble turned, letting go of Whiplash. "Oh, _come on--_"

And there was Nic, wielding a long, narrow metal pole, which she thrust spear-like directly into one of Rumble's red optics.

With a shriek of rage and pain, Rumble reeled away, wrenching the pole out of his shattered and utterly ruined lens. Fixing the remaining one on the little human, the Decepticon pulled back an arm. Nic started backing away. One of the circular wheel-guards popped up, and he snapped it down at her, sending it spinning right for her head. At the last possible nanosecond she stumbled, fell, twisting wildly aside, and the razor-edged wheel embedded in the floor beside her ear, the only casualty being a section of the long, reddish fibrous strands growing from her head.

Whiplash pushed himself off the impaling blade and dropped to the ground as Nic rolled away, clutching at the strands and staring at the wheel-guard.

"Okay," he heard her mutter. "The spinners aren't funny anymore."

Wasting no more words, Whiplash brought both cannons online and began firing at the still-disoriented Rumble. Optic injuries were particularly painful, and, like a forcible assault on one's spark chamber, the pain could not be immediately overridden. Whiplash used this to his full advantage, continuously firing, driving Rumble back, easily dodging the wide shots he could manage to return.

Nic was behind him. "That way! Push him back over there!"

With a brief glance to see what direction she was indicating, Whiplash divined her plan and gleefully changed his angle of attack, pouring more power into his blasts to herd and pound Rumble back step by step. The last step took him over the edge through an opening in a column, into a shaft. The battered Decepticon fell. Whiplash didn't bother to listen for an impact, but kept firing into the shaft's walls, knocking chunks of rock, metal and other material loose to rain down the shaft after Rumble. For good measure he brought down part of the ceiling, completely burying the shaft's opening.

At last Whiplash stopped, his cannons hot from the barrage. Dust slowly cleared, revealing only a pile of rubble. Neither Autobot nor human moved or spoke for several anxious minutes, watching the rubble carefully for any sign of movement.

Nothing.

Whiplash retracted his cannons as Nic leaned against his leg, expelling a gust of air.

"I am beginning to reevaluate your rock-throwing strategy," he said, "since twice now you have turned a battle in my favor."

"Hey, this is my planet," she replied, sinking shakily to the floor. "You don't just come to somebody's planet and go stomping all over their friends. It's rude." The amazing little human let out a high, slightly hysterical laugh and slumped over his foot. "Ho-o-o-oly freaking cow. Please tell me that's it, Whip-- he's gone, right?"

Whiplash made a stab at scanning the rubble. Rumble, it seemed, had fallen beyond his reach to see. He tried to push his damaged scanners but the attempt sent a dull, unpleasant twinge through his systems. "As far as I can discern."

"Good." She picked herself up, shaking off dust. "Are you all right?"

"My repair systems are already at work. Nothing serious, thank the Matrix." Whiplash retrieved his broken blade from the wall and scraped the dregs of lubricant off before sliding it back into its slot and locking the now-useless weapon in place. "And you? Are you damaged? Your... fibrous head-covering..."

Nic's hand came up and grabbed at the shortened strands. "It's just hair. I'll live. Bleh. I need a shower." Hands went to hips and she looked up at him. "I'll also need to dig out my helmet if I'm going to be riding around on you."

Hardly believing his good fortune, Whiplash knelt. "So you agree to help me?"

"In for a penny, in for a pound, I figure," she replied bafflingly, "and you're going to need a decent rock-thrower, don't you think?"

Chuckling, he transformed and tested his newly-repaired tire, finding it reinflated and whole, though it would still be another few hours before he dared put any sort of speed on it. "Come. Lead me to your hesitance--"

"Um... residence?"

_Primus, I give up._ "You can gather what supplies you need. We should begin as soon as possible."

"Right." He felt her climb into the seat, so tiny, so frail and light. "Whiplash, the Decepticons... are they all like him?"

"No," he told her, starting his engine.

She leaned in, grabbing the handlebars. "Okay. Good."

"Most of them are bigger."

* * *

"So what'd you tell your mom?" 

Mikaela glanced over at Sam just as Bumblebee turned down the radio to background-noise levels. "About what?"

"This trip." Sam shrugged. "Surely she wouldn't have let you come if she thought you'd be all alone with a boy."

She returned the shrug, sweeping her hair behind her ear in what she hoped didn't look like an uncomfortable fidget. "I just told her I was going out for a couple days. She's used to me just traipsing off anyway, and she's been in a mood lately."

"Bad mood?"

"My dad's parole hearing is next month," she said, leaning her head against the window.

Sam favored her with a curious look. "I thought you were looking forward to seeing him again."

"I am," Mikaela replied, "Mom isn't."

"Oh." Funny how he could pack about seven shades of meaning into one awkward syllable.

"And last night she said the d-word. Divorce." She let out a humorless laugh. "So when Bee told me about this, I just went for it. I really need the distraction, you know?"

"Does your dad know?"

"I don't think so. The last time she went for a visit was six months ago, that I know of. And when I went last week he was all upbeat about coming home, so probably not."

"Ouch."

"Hell of a welcome-home, right?" Mikaela stretched as much as she could in the car seat, and felt the seat inch back slightly to give her more legroom. She grinned and patted the arm rest in silent thanks. _Oh, what am I getting pissy about?_ she thought suddenly. _Here I've got not one but two guys who like me for who I am, my dad is getting out soon and I'll still have all this whether or not there's a divorce._ "You know, I think he'd like you a lot."

Before she'd met Sam, she'd never known it was possible for someone to trip while sitting down. "Uh? Your-your dad?"

She couldn't help it. He was so easy to fluster, and so damned cute at it. "Yeah. Maybe you and him could have a lunch with me sometime."

"You want me to meet your dad?" Sam's hands floated off the steering wheel and he wasn't even pretending to watch the road anymore. "He's not one of those dads who likes to, I dunno, talk about his gun collection that may or may not exist, right before I take you out?"

Mikaela smirked at him. "I don't know. He hasn't had a chance to bully my suitors, so, maybe. Be fun to find out."

"Fun, she says. Hey, Bee, you'll protect me if Mikaela's dad tries to pinch my head off, won't you?"

A burst from the radio answered him. "So you better run and hide-- (frzt) You're in trouble now-- (szxt) --a dead man walking, a dead man walking--"

"Oh, fine, I see how it is!" Sam poked at the dashboard as Mikaela dissolved into laughter. "I help save the world and this is the thanks I get."

"You're going to milk that for the rest of your life, aren't you?" Mikaela giggled.

"Damn skippy." Sam thrust his chin defiantly out, the very caricature of martyred and put-upon. He couldn't hold it for long, though, and grinned at her, one of his open, honest grins. "Besides, I think Bee'll have his hands full protecting me from my own parents when we get back."

"What? Why?" And from Bumblebee, a questioning blip of radio static.

"Well, they made me promise to do two things after the road trip. One, I'd have to get a job for the rest of the summer--"

"That's not so bad."

"And two, I explain _exactly_ how the hell I got my hands on a 2009 Camaro."

"...oh."

"Yeah, so I'm wracking my brain here. They know I don't have this kind of cash, and I haven't been selling my organs on the black market, either. I thought about saying it was Pimp My Ride or Overhaulin' or something, but then Dad would want to see the show."

"You could say the government gave it to you to replace the, uh, older model."

"My mother'd be all over Simmons about her roses if that were the case. Already considered that." Sam leaned back in the driver's seat, arms folded as he frowned at some distant point beyond the hood of the self-driving car. "I'm only so good at bullshitting, and they're not stupid... figured I'd have something worked out by the time we found the new guy and got back home."

"Speaking of which..." Bumblebee's voice filled the car's interior, startling Mikaela. Before she could admonish him-- Ratchet had told him to give it a _rest_-- the steering wheel flipped down, and the instrument panel folded in on itself to reveal another panel of utterly alien (literally) design. A thin beam of light sprang up from some mechanism within.

"Oh, I've seen this," Sam said excitedly, like a kid with a new video game to show off, "he can even get Cinemax on this thing--"

Mikaela raised a brow.

"--but you know, we totally watched Lifetime instead, of course."

"Uh huh." The beam of light had coalesced into a roughly rectangular plane hovering above the converted panel, glowing faintly blue as shapes flickered into being in the 'screen.'

"Optimus just sent me this," Bumblebee said, and switched to a swell of country music: "Well, Ah smell T-R-O-U-B-L-E!"

It was a pixelly, shaky video of two robots tussling in a cloud of wind-blown dust. Sam leaned forward, nose-to-hologram, squinting as if he could clear the picture that way. "Trouble? I take it you mean this isn't a couple of Autobots having a minor difference of opinion."

"Which one's which?" Mikaela asked, latching onto Sam's shoulder as she craned to see. Bumblebee had frozen the video on what was probably the clearest frame. "I hope little blue guy's not the Autobot. He's getting his ass kicked."

"No way to tell from this," Bumblebee replied, his buzzing mechanical voice cracking.

Mikaela gave the dashboard a flick. "Hey, don't make me tell Ratchet on you."

"All we hear is radio ga-ga," Queen blasted contritely from the speakers even as she felt the car accelerate down the interstate. The holographic screen flickered and switched to a news broadcast.

"--struction site in east Topeka where a series of explosions have rocked the area, seeming to originate in the building itself, which locals have dubbed 'The Eyesore.' Police and bomb squads are already on the scene but as of yet there seem to be no injuries or fatalities, but also no leads or indications whether this is a terrorist attack or just an accident. Please stay tuned to KSNT for further updates on this--"

"Oh geez." Sam's voice was flat with understatement. "And you still can't contact new guy?"

"--Noise, but I can't hear anything--" the radio responded.

"Better floor it, Bee," Mikaela said, unnecessarily because the Camaro was already speeding up even more. The steering wheel reappeared and Sam resumed pretending to drive.

After a moment, Mikaela favored her boyfriend with a sidelong look. "Lifetime, huh?"

"A movie about a little deaf orphan boy and a puppy. I cried like a _baby_."

"Uh huh."

* * *

The side door swung open as the sound of Whiplash's engine reverberated off the brick-and-stucco of the Darlings' house. Nic saw Uncle Terry's jaw drop as she sailed past, down the driveway on a shining blue Tomahawk. She wondered what he'd explode about first: her unexplained car accident, the fact that she was riding a motorcycle without a helmet, the fact that she was riding a motorcycle that _wasn't supposed to exist, _or that she was riding a motorcycle at all. 

"Nicole Breanna Darling!" He followed as she parked Whiplash on the concrete patio in back and got off. He had to shout to be heard over the throaty roar of the engine. "What is this?! Your car-- I just got a call from Karl Wilkins that-- Nic, can you turn that thing off?"

"Whip, cut the engine," she said, and turned to her uncle as Whiplash solicitously shut his engine down. "Sorry, this has been a really crazy day."

"How about we start with this business with your car, and... how did you do that? What _is_ this thing?"

Nic sat down on a plastic patio chair and looked around the back yard, thankful for the tall privacy fence. "Aunt Marie and the boys here?"

"No, they're at the shop, and don't change the subject-- Karl calls me saying he saw Eugene's little girl tooling around town on some monster bike without a helmet, and I tell him no, he's got to be seeing some other insane redhead, because my brother taught you better than that." Terry waved an arm at the 'monster bike' and Nic flinched, hoping Whiplash wouldn't take offense. "So am I crazy, or is this thing a Tomahawk? Where did you get it? And I thought you swore off bikes, never mind that it's not even close to street legal."

_How can I change the subject when you won't pick one?_ "Uncle Terry, just-- give me a second, something huge is going on and I'm trying to think how to tell you."

Terry drew in a long breath, and, with a sidelong look at the motorcycle, took a seat in the other patio chair. "Did you steal it?"

"_What?_ Uncle Ter-- no!" Nic burst into laughter, smacking her hands over her face. "Steal it! Ohmygod."

"Well, honey, look at it." Terry grinned, releasing the tension with a little chuckle. "Explain me this, pumpkin."

"I..." Nic pulled her hands down her face. "I've got a friend who needs my help. I've got to go away for awhile. Hey-- let me _finish_, no, it's not drugs and I didn't kill anybody."

Terry shrugged innocently, as if he hadn't been about to suggest those very things. Nic knew her uncle only too well.

"He's lost and I can help him find his friends. I don't know how long it'll take."

"That's real charitable of you, but can we skip to the part about this... this?" Again he indicated the bike. "And... what happened to your hair?"

Nic stood up and regarded Whiplash, who sat quiescent where he had been parked. "Uncle Terry, can you keep this to yourself?" She half-turned and pinned him with a look. "I'm serious."

He leaned forward, clearly concerned, and nodded.

"I want you to meet him. So you know why I have to do this." She hoped her disguised robot friend would cooperate; the last thing she needed would be for him to sit quietly on his wheels and make her uncle think she was in need of heavy medication. "It's okay," she said, addressing the bike directly. "You can trust him."

For a moment, the robot did just sit there. Then the blue and turquoise fairing split apart and shifted. Nic reluctantly turned away from the sight to gauge her uncle's reaction, which was a little more spectacular than she'd hoped for. As Whiplash stood up behind her, Terry let out a garbled cry, scrambled, and managed to flip his chair backwards.

"Uncle Terry!" She rushed over to him, just as he leapt to his feet with surprising spryness for a man his age, grabbing the chair and holding it out in front of him as a shield.

"_Jeeziss!_" Terry bit off the oath in startled falsetto.

"Uncle-- it's okay, he's friendly!" Nic inwardly rolled her eyes at her own words; as if Whiplash were some oversized stray dog that had followed her home. "This is Whiplash."

"Whiplash...?" Terry repeated, still pointing the chair legs up at the robot, who for his part, merely tilted his head, blue lenses blinking.

"Yes. My friend. The one I'm helping."

"It is an honor to meet you, Commander Uncle." Whiplash made a sort of quarter-bow, inclining his head and shoulders briefly.

"He's just my uncle," Nic said, and wondered if the alien robot even had a concept of the term-- if alien robots had familial relationships at all.

"Nicole--!" Terry's voice was still perched in the rafters, as it were, and Nic tried to pull the chair out of his white-knuckled hands.

"Put it down, Uncle Terry, he's not going to hurt you. He's... an alien. He's just a little lost, is all."

Terry's mouth came open and closed with no sound as he stared the robot up and down several times. Whiplash politely endured the gaping, slowly taking a few steps back and lowering himself to a kneeling position on the corner of the patio, perhaps realizing that his towering height was part of the problem.

"Nic speaks the truth," he said. "I would never harm a human."

"Never harm a..." Terry seemed to shake himself out of some of his shock. "Just what do you want with my niece?"

"I told you," Nic put in. "I'm going to help him find his friends. Some of his kind's already here somewhere, he just can't find them."

Another few moments of imitating a goldfish, and Terry lowered the chair, running a hand down his beard. "...well, I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords."

Nic gave her uncle a sharp smack on the arm. "Oh, _now_ you get cute."

"I am not here to conquer." Whiplash sounded positively aggrieved at the very suggestion.

"He's joking. He's being a wiseass." _Hell of a time for the patented Darling coping mechanism to kick in_, she thought. Falling back to smartassery was more than a tradition in her family; it was practically a genetic trait.

"Is-- where did-- how did this happen?" Terry sputtered.

"Last night, when I was filing," Nic replied. Only last night? It seemed like weeks ago. "He crashed in the field out back. When I went out there to see what it was, he popped out of the crater and scared the bejeezus out of me. I slipped and knocked my head on that old footbridge and fell in the creek, and next thing I know, I'm on the shop floor." She grabbed her uncle's arm for emphasis. "He saved me."

"Last night?" Terry threw Whiplash a sharp look. "The shop computer. You did that, didn't you?"

"It was the only method I could find to obtain the data I sought," Whiplash said, "It was not my intention to cause an inconvenience."

"Data? What data?"

"Language-- how to communicate with Nic."

"He downloaded English over dial-up," Nic clarified.

Terry shook his head. "I'm still taking it out of your paycheck."

Nic threw up her hands. "Whatever-- Look, I've got to get ready. I'm going to get my stuff together, Whiplash, just wait here."

"Please hurry," the mechanoid replied, and folded neatly up into the Tomahawk shape.

Terry gawped anew, daring to approach the bike and poke cautiously at the closest handlebar. "How-- Nicole?"

Already through the patio door, Nic half-turned and shrugged. "Yeah, he does that."

"He does that," Terry repeated flatly, and followed her inside. "Hold up. Wait a second, Nic, can you start over? Alien... bike... thing, and you still haven't explained your car, what happened to your hair--"

"Answer to both those questions is the same thing," Nic said through a heavy sigh. "Rumble."

"Anytime you want to start making sense, it'd be great."

"Rumble. Bad robot alien who followed Whiplash down here. He's the one who trashed my car." Nic opened the coat closet and dug around behind a vacuum cleaner. "Where's my old backpack?"

"Bad robot alien. And this... Whiplash character is a _good_ robot alien, I suppose."

"Ye-e-es," she drawled, standing on tiptoe to look on a high shelf. "He pulled me out of the creek, remember?"

"Where is bad robot alien now, and dare I ask again what this has to do with your hair?"

"Rumble--" and here she couldn't help but feel a rush of mixed terror and exhilaration at the memory-- "is gone. We _buried_ him."

"We?"

"Whiplash and me." Nic found the backpack-- a basic black nylon and canvas affair that would be easy enough to wear for extended periods. She brushed off a few dust bunnies and checked the interior; it hadn't seen action since the last day of high school over three years ago. Her luggage acquired, she ducked into the kitchen for a pair of scissors and headed for the bathroom.

"Nicole. I want you to start at the beginning. _Please._" Terry stood in the doorway of the bathroom, arms folded, eyes fixed on his niece.

Nic took in her reflection in the sink mirror. She was dusty and scuffed, and the section of shortened hair made her aware just how close she'd come to being beheaded. This was no game. She had stepped into the middle of a battlefield that spanned galaxies, and she had never felt so small.

But at the same time, the young woman staring back at her was someone she hadn't seen in two years.

So as she took the scissors to the rest of her hair, she told her uncle everything. She tried to play down just how much actual danger she had been in, but she had the feeling he guessed it anyway.

By the time she'd finished the tale, a pile of copper-red hair was nested in the sink. Terry was regarding her with an uncharacteristically inscrutable expression. Nic frowned thoughtfully at her reflection. The self-administered haircut wasn't exactly to her liking, but it was better than going around with only the left half of her head of waist-length hair. She'd managed to get it more or less a uniform length all over, about ten inches, but its thick waviness was making it wild and flyaway; a sort of Irish-flavored 'fro.

"So you're going to ride off on-- and I can't believe I'm saying this-- an alien robot to find more alien robots, and the only leads you have are Nevada and California," Terry said. "With yet more alien robots hell-bent on blowing _your_ alien robot up."

Nic dumped her shed tresses in the trash can. "That's about the size of it."

"If I hadn't just talked to your not-a-bike out there this would be the point where I ask what the hell you've been cutting your crack with."

"You're a very funny man, Terrence Darling." Nic used a washcloth to take off the worst of the dust on her face and arms and squeezed past her uncle. "Whiplash needs a guide."

"You've never been out of Kansas."

Nic went into her room and tossed the backpack on her bed. "That's not true. I went camping in Nebraska that one summer."

"You're dodging the issue," said Terry. "This is _dangerous_. You've already been attacked. Twice! Twice in one day!"

"I _know_. I was _there_." She turned to face him and planted her hands on her hips. "And you know what? We won. I could have run away both times but I couldn't just let-- Rumble would have killed Whiplash, and then he'd come after me just for the hell of it. If I hadn't stayed to help, we'd both be dead. Whiplash and me, we make a _damn good team_."

She whirled and yanked open her closet door, diving into the clutter collected at the bottom. "Whiplash needs my help. He can't exactly go cross-country as a riderless bike and stop at a gas station to ask for directions, and by the way, has anyone seen any other giant robots 'round these parts?" Her hands came upon a smooth, round object and she unearthed a motorcycle helmet. "And we can look out for each other."

Terry, leaning against the doorjamb, drew in a long breath and shook his head. "Figures it would take something falling out of the sky to get you back on a bike."

Nic, depositing the helmet beside her backpack, paused and took a breath, steeling herself against the flood of tears she'd been holding back since she'd made the decision to go with Whiplash.

Two years minus a day since she'd been on a motorcycle. Two years minus a day since her and her father's shared birthday, and two years minus a day since that father-daughter ride down the flat, straight Kansas roads when her father's bike had seized and flipped, killing him almost instantly.

Two years minus a day since Nic had pushed her own motorcycle into a ditch, swearing she'd never touch another.

"Daddy would want me to go."

Terry let out a soft chuckle. "Hell, he'd probably be fighting you for Whiplash's seat."

The dam burst, a massive release of tension and pent-up grief. Nic pawed the streaming tears off her cheeks and laughed. "This is huge, Uncle Terry. So much bigger than me. If I don't see this through, I'll regret it for the rest of my life, and Daddy would never forgive me."

Terry came into the bedroom, enfolding his niece in a tight hug. "Wish I could just tell you no, but you're a grown woman. Just... be careful. And I expect regular updates."

Nic returned the hug fiercely, grinning into her uncle's big chest. "What're you going to tell Aunt Marie?"

"The truth. That you're taking a friend for a ride home." He disengaged and glanced at the empty backpack on the bed. "You'd better get your stuff together."

Nic snatched up a scarf-- blue, though not a match for Whiplash's color-- and rolled it up into a band to hold her hair back from her face and keep it manageable under a helmet. "I'll grab something to eat on the road and call you when I find a motel." She bundled up a few t-shirts and a pair of jeans, cramming them into the backpack. Toothbrush and the bare basic toiletries were next. She was about to zip it closed when she remembered something else from two years minus a day ago.

The last birthday present her father had given her.

Again she dove into her closet, pulling out a box. Inside, butter-smooth leather was creased slightly from the long storage but still supple and new, having never been worn. A full set of high-quality and very expensive motorcycle leathers, all in matte black save for the right shoulder and sleeve of the jacket, which was white. Simple styling, no outlandish chains or extraneous zippers, exactly to her taste.

Nic grinned at her uncle. "Out and shut the door. I've got to change."

* * *

Whiplash shifted anxiously on his wheels. 

Perhaps this Commander Just-Uncle Terry human would forbid Nic to accompany him. The larger human had seemed visibly more distressed by Whiplash's appearance than Nic had been. The Autobot wished his sensors could stretch just a little further so he could hear what the humans were saying.

If Nic were ordered not to go, what then? Could he establish another such rapport with some other human? Not likely. Or make his way on his own?

Whiplash had had more than enough of being alone. Nic simply _had_ to--

"You ready, Whip?"

No longer clad in the flimsy woven-fiber armor, Nic stood at his side wrapped neck-down in some form of organic grained material, much more durable-looking. Under one arm she held a sturdy helmet, and strapped to her back was a netted sack packed with her supplies.

"Yes, Nic," he replied, immensely impressed. He wondered what her function in human society was-- if she wasn't a soldier of some kind, he would be very surprised indeed.

The Uncle human appeared in the portal of the construct and came to Nic's side. She leaned into the larger human, wrapping her free arm around his torso. His response was to wrap both his arms around her, and briefly touch his mouthparts to her forehead. Whiplash observed the exchange with great interest. Though the gestures were foreign to him, he realized this was no commander-subordinate relationship. This was... familial.

"I love you, Uncle."

"I love you too. Be safe." The Uncle human jabbed a finger at Whiplash as Nic mounted. "Take care of her, Mr. Whiplash."

"I owe her my life," Whiplash replied. "I can do no less."

And he fired up his engine, his spark buoyed. The road to Optimus Prime and the haven of this new homeworld was finally stretched before him.

* * *

_Rumble's down, but is he out? And even if he is, that road's not going to be as straight as Whip thinks it is, nooooo._

_Once again, thanks so much for all the awesome reviews! I continue to be amazed at how great this fandom is._


	5. Riders on the Storm

_"Rumble has been defeated by Autobot Whiplash. He seems to have allied himself with a native life-form and is again on the move. I will need to get closer to locate him."_

_"Negative. Laserbeak will continue surveillance. A scout has been dispatched and is headed east-- the Autobots know of Whiplash's arrival. You will alter course to intercept Autobot Bumblebee. Engage and delay, destroy if you can."_

_"Just when I thought this wasn't going to be any fun."_

_"...hey! Hey, IS ANYBODY GONNA DIG ME OUT?!"_

* * *

"A limit!"

Nic chuckled into her helmet. "Yes, Whip. A speed limit."

"A limit. On _speed!_" Somehow he was projecting his voice up at her helmet; something about focused sonics and resonant harmonics, it was all geek to her-- and he in turn could hear her just fine somehow through the helmet and the wind and engine noise. "How do you humans get anywhere?"

"It's not that slow," she told him. "We get places just fine. Though I will admit there is a lot of flat nothing here. That's just Kansas." She supposed all these stretched-out uninterrupted roads looked pretty appealing to a being who apparently put much stock in his speed. When she'd told him to keep it under seventy, his reaction gave her the sudden mental image of dangling a hamburger in front of a puppy and not letting him have it. And then there was the explanation on what that speedometer in his instrument panel actually meant...

"But we are on a mission of some urgency," he protested, emphasizing with an impatient _thrumm-thrumm_ of his engine. "Surely this limit can be paved."

It took her a second to register the malapropism. "Waived," she corrected, "and no. It's the law of the land." Nic shrugged as best she could in her nearly-prone position over his chassis. She wondered if he could see her, if he could see at all in this form, or if he was just stuck looking straight ahead through his headlight or something. "If you go over the speed limit and we get caught by the police-- that's local law enforcement-- I could get in trouble. Especially since your Tomahawk suit here is a little illegal. The less we rock the boat, the fewer delays this mission will have, trust me."

"I can outrun your police..." The speedometer nudged upward just slightly past the seventy mark.

"And stir up even more trouble. They'd radio ahead and set up roadblocks to catch the crazy biker chick on a very distinguishable blue bike. Seriously, the less attention we call to ourselves, the faster this will go." Nic sighed. "Are you sure you can't turn into something a little more commonplace?"

"Not without sacrificing this form and expending more power than I can spare at this time."

"So you only have one vehicle mode at a time?" Just what the heck did he turn into before?

"There are some members of my race," he said, "who can hold two alternate modes at once. Such an ability is very rare. I myself have only seen one such individual, and I would not care to meet him again."

"Decepticon, huh?"

The blip of sound he made, even foreign and electronic to her ears, was dark with distaste. "Blitzwing. A singularly cruel miscreant."

Rumble was beginning to sound more and more like small potatoes, much to her dismay. "He's not here, is he?"

"Primus, I hope not. Rumble and his cohorts are more than enough trouble. Which is why this speed limit of yours is so distressing. If more Decepticons find us, I _will_ break it, police or no."

"You won't get any argument from me there. I'll take cops over pissed-off giant robocars any day."

"...only _seventy_ miles per hour?"

"Cheer up, Whiplash. It goes up to eighty when we cross over into Colorado."

"Barbaric." But there was a gentle note of humor behind the accusation.

"It's for our own safety. Speeding can cause accidents, people get hurt."

He seemed to accept that, but it didn't stop him from muttering about superior reaction time. Nic laughed, freeing a hand from the handlebars to give his... shoulder? gas tank?... a pat.

"Don't be too eager to show off. I have a feeling you'll have plenty chance enough to use that speed of yours."

"In any case, it's good to have my wheels on solid ground again." Whiplash smoothly skirted an RV, passing the slower vehicle. "I have had my fill of space."

"Gets kinda boring out there, does it?"

"Hardly," he replied, surprised. "There are a great many wonders in the deep reaches, but wonders are a poor consolation when one has nowhere to go, no progress to measure, no companions, and no rest from one's enemies." A pause. "Besides, there seem to be wonders aplenty on this planet. Like you."

"Really?" Nic felt a full-blown idiot grin spreading across her face.

"Nic, when I told the Uncle Terry that I owed you my life, I was sincere," Whiplash said. "Rumble intended to breach my spark chamber, and would have had you not intervened. You are so small, you seem so fragile, yet you showed no fear in confronting a foe who could easily destroy you."

She shivered, even warm as it was in her leathers, remembering with stark clarity the sharp metallic twang of a spinner rim impacting the floor mere fractions of an inch away from her neck; seeing the spiral-cut rim's edges actually sharpened into blades, turning an innocent if tacky wheel-dressing into something sinister and deadly. Shallow asshole Rumble might have been but he certainly didn't pull any punches.

But hearing that gut-wrenching howl, alien though it was, coming from Whiplash as Rumble cracked open his chest armor, knowing without a doubt it was a cry of unspeakable pain... what other course had there been to take but to hurl a chunk of brick? Admittedly, the rebar in the eye had been a lucky hit, but a grimly satisfying one. She was glad she'd been able to stop Rumble from hurting her friend, but a part of her was shocked at her own daring.

"Well, I _was_ afraid. Very."

"All the more reason I am glad I risked revealing myself to you. Is such courage a trait common to your kind?"

Nic could feel the idiot grin returning, along with a blush. "I just did what I had to do."

For a few miles they rode in silence. This leg of the trip was the longest and simplest, and Nic simply let Whiplash run himself-- I-70 was a straight shot through to Utah, where they would have to turn southwest towards Las Vegas and into Mission City, the first stop on the rumor-mill road trip. Despite the uncomfortable-seeming position she had to take, lying down along the chassis rather than sitting up in the seat, she again had to marvel at just how much a treat Whiplash was to ride. Smoother than any bike she had ever been on, and she had been on quite a few in her time. She could barely feel the road at all. And rather than tugging tiresomely at her shoulders, her backpack rested on her back with little discomfort, fortunate because she had a feeling no panniers on earth would have fit the bike.

"Tell me about Cybertron," she said at length.

For at least a quarter mile, Whiplash said nothing. "I can't."

"...why not?"

"When I was first brought online, the planet had already plunged into war." His voice dropped quietly. "It was the only Cybertron I knew. To me, it is only a birthplace and a battlefield. That is not an impression I would want to give of a world that was once a beautiful empire."

"What is this war about?" she asked, before thinking that perhaps he might not want to talk about it.

"The Allspark." The way he hummed the name spoke volumes of reverence and awe. "The source of our existence, a power unequaled in the universe. The Decepticons desired it for their own ends, to conquer and destroy. It was jettisoned into space long ago to keep it out of their hands. But--" he paused thoughtfully-- "I don't understand. Prime has declared Earth our new homeworld. Why would he call off the search, if the Allspark hasn't been found? And if it has, why not return to restore Cybertron?"

"Guess that's one thing to ask this Prime guy when we find him." Along with 'why Earth, of all places?' she added mentally. A great many wonders in the deep reaches, he had said. Why had these particular wonders-- sentient mechanical chameleons-- come to settle here? Surely they'd have had their pick of whatever choice real estate the galaxy had to offer.

"Indeed." Whiplash was silent for another long pause. Then, in a considerably brighter tone, he said, "Tell me about Earth."

"All right," Nic replied, "But only if you tell me more about Cybertron. _Your_ Cybertron, the war... you." She again released a hand to poke him in the instrument panel. "When we find your friends they can tell me all about the shiny Cybertron of old, but right now, it's your story I want."

"...Why? Mine is not a pleasant account; our war is all I have ever known."

"I kind of enlisted myself when I threw that rock." Nic gave him another pat, this one firmer. "And if there's one thing you need to know about humans, it's that we're very, very curious."

"I am beginning to see that. What would you like to know?"

"Oh... everything."

So he started at the beginning.

* * *

_There's nothing gradual about birth on Cybertron._

_You come online with a shock, every circuit singing to life around you. Some of us experience a fraction of a moment of confusion or panic before our programming kicks in, telling us who and what we are. Not I. My awareness was immediate, there in my assembly alcove. From my very first moment, I knew my self._

_Autobot. Reinforced compact exoframe designed for optimum speed and agility. Twin arm-mount pulse cannons, side-mounted double blades for close melee. I was to be an advance scout or messenger. Speed is my gift._

_Right away, in what was my first independent opinion, I decided I liked that. I climbed out of my alcove, eager to see just how fast I could go. My pre-programmed knowledge showed me a planet covered in long roads and elevated highways. I was awash with anticipation, literally born to run._

_To either side of me, other new protoforms were emerging. One of them, a large, heavily-armored hulk, came tumbling ungracefully out into the causeway, still shaking off that first-moment panic. The fit was of much amusement to the fellow on the other side, climbing out of its own alcove with a peal of laughter. A third protoform appeared, its first words used to scold both of them for wasting time when we should be getting to the surface, something important was going on..._

_Right away, I knew these much larger and hardier beings to be my brothers. We were to be a team. Our commander, an older Autobot, would arrive soon. The largest of us began its existence by arguing with the one who was scolding us, insisting that we stay put until we received orders. The one who had laughed didn't seem to care one way or another. I was with the third of my brothers-- I wanted to get topside, commander or no. I wanted to run._

_Alarms put an end to the debate. A message broadcast on emergency channels, impossible to shut out._

_"ASSEMBLY COMPLEX UNDER ATTACK. EVACUATE FACILITY IMMEDIATELY."_

_Well, I wanted to run... _

_At that moment, all of us did._

_Explosions shook the foundation. The very walls around us shattered. Fire bloomed and washed around us, staining our untried shells with black scorch marks. Sparkless, incomplete protoforms were crushed and torn apart, never to know life._

_Frantic transmissions danced from one of my brothers to the next in rapid-fire succession-- who would attack an assembly crèche? Why? I ignored them, instead concerned with getting out of what had become a deathtrap. Speed is my gift._

_My gift saved my life._

_It didn't save my brothers._

_We hadn't even chosen names._

_I found myself on the surface of a Cybertron that did not match what my memory banks held. It was torn, scarred, afire with battle. I was stunned. How could this be? That my life was to begin in death and destruction?_

_"DIE."_

_Decepticon. Barreling toward me from within the burning wreckage of my birthplace. Again my speed was the only thing that kept my existence from ending right there. But I was too hemmed in by war-torn ruins to gain any ground, too disoriented by the contradictions in what my programming told me and what my optics saw._

_Someone interceded. Not my intended commander but a welcome sight nonetheless. The Autobot, Ironhide, signaled me with a terse transmission to get clear, and beat back the attacker with a furious assault, finally hurling it back into the assembly's inferno._

_"That won't keep him," Ironhide said. "You-- where's the rest?"_

_"I am alone."_

_My first words._

_"Get out of here. Get to Iacon. Rodimus is waiting for you. Tell him what happened. I'll handle Barricade!"_

_I did as I was told without argument. There was no time to mourn my short-lived brothers, nor dwell on my guilt that I had done nothing to save them. I ran. I haven't stopped moving since._

_Even once I joined the Autobots under Rodimus's command, I had no rest. The war was already underway, and since my activation had gone from bad to worse. The glistening, beautiful Cybertron of my pre-programming was becoming more of a distant fantasy with each passing moment. It was easy not to dwell on a peace I had never known._

_Instead, I threw myself whole-spark into war. I proved myself in battle as someone who could run rings around even the largest Decepticons, and distract them into making fatal mistakes that my comrades could take advantage of. I could tease and jeer and lead our enemies into ambush. I was relied upon to carry messages across long distances swiftly, messages that were too sensitive to trust to even the most secure channel._

_Once the Decepticons learned of that role, I turned into a moving target. It was almost like a game to them. I suspect there was a betting pool. I knew full well the kind of attention I could garner, tearing breakneck through a battlefield, and I even goaded them on, when I was of a mood to make a pest of myself._

_Rodimus... discouraged this behavior. Told me that it would get me into trouble. Powerglide remarked to me often how ironic it was for him to reprimand me so, since Rodimus himself had apparently been quite the hellion before the weight of command had matured him. I thought nothing of it. With my comrades around me, and with my much-vaunted speed, I was untouchable._

_And then, the Allspark was gone. Out into space to Primus only knew where, with Megatron in its wake. The order went out from Optimus Prime himself: Scatter. Find the Allspark before the Decepticons did_

_I went with Rodimus and his unit, to be their scout. Space is vast, I thought, vast enough that we might actually have time to rest from star to star. But even there in the void, we were dogged at every turn. Hunted by one of the worst Decepticons and his crew, who were intent on running us to ground, attacking us whenever an opportunity presented itself. He was relentless. Forget looking for the Allspark. We had enough on our hands just staying ahead a step or two._

_Once, just before a routine scouting mission, Rodimus asked me to download the ship's logs. I did so, storing the compressed and encrypted data deep in my memory core. I was curious why he would order me to do this. It wasn't standard procedure, and I wouldn't need it to reconnoiter a very boring lifeless moon. Rodimus chose not to answer my questions, and I didn't press the issue._

_I have never liked being alone. As a scout I often find myself the only Autobot-- the only living thing, usually-- for lightyears. But I was never out of reach of my comrades. Never more than a comm channel away. This made my solitary excursions bearable. I could always easily and quickly return to the company of my own._

_But this time..._

_Impatient and disinterested in the airless rock I had been ordered to pick over, I noticed that communications had gone silent. At first this didn't concern me overmuch. But then too much time had passed._

_Bluestreak, for one, was never this quiet for this long._

_I returned to the ship, abandoning my mission. In the hangar, I learned immediately what had silenced the loquacious Bluestreak: He lay half-transformed into transition form, spark chamber wrenched open and dark. He had been trying to escape._

_One by one I found my teammates where they had fallen. Perceptor, torn in two. Powerglide, with a gaping, smoking hole where his spark had been. All I could find of Rodimus was an arm, severed violently at the shoulder and still spitting weak spurts of energy. Parts unrecognizable littered the entire ship. The ship's computer was nothing more than a smoldering mass of charred wires and melted circuitry._

_I spoke aloud into the spaceborne grave. "I am... alone."_

_"Not to worry," said a voice. "You'll join 'em soon enough!"_

_"Rumble!" I whirled, cannons at the ready. "Where's the rest of you? I find it hard to believe you could have done all this yourself."_

_"Be a nice stasis dream, that," he sneered back. "But you're right, shortstack. I just came back to admire the boss's handiwork and tie me up some loose ends. So be a good little scrap heap and stand still for once."_

_I was disinclined to comply, naturally. I knew I could not win against him one-on-one. Rumble was better armored, better armed, and bigger than me. But I fought anyway, if only to strike a few vindictive blows on my teammates' behalf. I wanted, at that moment, nothing more than to pierce his spark chamber and see him die._

_Soon, however, logic processes overrode my desire for vengeance. Self-preservation protocols were stronger than my hatred. Rodimus must have known something was going to happen-- and I now held the only record of the ship's logs. There was something in them, some vital information, that needed to be preserved. If I failed to preserve myself, and by extension the logs, Rodimus and the others would have had meaningless deaths._

_So I ran. I lost Rumble easily in an asteroid field._

_Since the very beginning, I have been running._

_Speed is my gift._

_Somehow, I would find a way use it to save more than just myself._

* * *

There was something tickling at the edge of Bumblebee's sensors, and he didn't like it.

It was well after dark, and they were roughly two-thirds across the state of Utah. By consensus the trio had opted to continue driving through the night rather than stopping to procure temporary lodging. Sam was offline-- sleeping, rather-- sprawled on the backseat, and Mikaela, chatting quietly with one of her friends over her phone, was playing driver in case someone happened to see. Both Bumblebee's humans, of course, had no reason to be nervous, and for now, at least, he decided he didn't have much reason either. Whatever it was poking at his sensors wasn't giving coherent enough readings to really be anything.

_Yet_, he couldn't help but think. Millennia of fighting tended to make one a little overcautious. Likely it was a flock of birds or satellite signals bouncing off clouds, though sensor blips of that sort weren't usually so persistent. Earth's atmosphere was delightfully chaotic, even in California, near the calming meteorological influence of the Pacific Ocean. Bumblebee had long ago learned that there was going to be _something_ funny registering on his sensors at any given time.

There it was again. Skirting southward just along the edge of his forward range, high up in the air.

Flocks of birds didn't deliberately avoid his sensor range.

Carefully, he extended sensors, diverting scanners momentarily to concentrate on that specific direction. There registered a short, vaguely familiar energy reading, which abruptly vanished, leaving a blank spot in the swirling atmosphere that quickly dipped out of range again.

Dampening field.

Irritation rippled through Bumblebee's processor. Just how stupid did the Decepticons think he was?

_"Bumblebee to Ironhide._

_"Here,_ came the curt reply. _Don't tell me you found him already._

_"No, but something's found me. Airborne and using a dampening field. How far behind me are you?_

_"Middle of Nevada. I've got Lennox and Epps with me. Prime and Ratchet not far behind. It's not Starscream, is it?"_

Though the digital channel he was forced to use in lieu of voice couldn't convey his tone, Bumblebee did his best to snort. _"He's not this subtle. It's like this one is trying to get around behind me without me noticing, but if he thinks he can get the drop on me, I'm insulted. He might be headed in your direction, keep your scanners open."_

No response.

_"...Ironhide?"_

_"Bumblebee to Optimus. Ratchet? Anyone?"_

Slag it, this wasn't good at all...

"Jessie? Jess? I can't hear you, are you--" The sound of shrill static issued from Mikaela's cell phone, drawing Bumblebee's attention inward. Mikaela drew the phone away from her ear and sighed with disgust. "Man, reception's really crappy out here."

And if that was a coincidence, Bumblebee would trade in his Camaro shell for an Isetta. He gently braked to a stop, pulling off onto the shoulder of the highway, and gave a light shudder, popping open the driver's side door. Quick to catch on, Mikaela twisted in the seat and shook Sam awake.

"Buh. Wuzzit?"

"Sam, grab the bags. Bee wants us out of the car, something's up."

Sam flopped blearily, grappling for the straps of the luggage in the floorboard. "Bumblebee?"

"--Got to find a safe place, Better stay in silence--" the scout's radio replied as the two humans clambered out. He half-expected them to insist on staying to help, and Sam looked like he was about to, but Mikaela towed him away, across the road and into the trees for cover. Bumblebee nodded to himself, turning his attention back to the sky. He made a quick scan of the deserted highway, and, detecting no other vehicles, transformed and stood up, raising his cannon.

He fired a shot.

The blank spot in the sky vanished, and a distinct energy signature wheeled and came about. Bumblebee opened a narrow communications beam.

_The jig is up, Decepticon. Come down here and fight me if you've got the gears for it._

The reaction was immediate. The airborne signature dove far faster than any human-made craft, unleashing a pair of missiles. Bumblebee leapt out of the way just as they struck the road, twin explosions briefly lighting the dark section of highway.

An aircraft-- a Predator UAV, according to a quick peek at the Internet-- spun wildly as it dropped nose-first towards terra firma, transforming in the instant before it touched down, metal talons splintering the asphalt as it landed. Despite the altered shell, Bumblebee knew the avian shape, recognized the serrated, pointed prow.

He swept the area again with scanners on a stronger setting. If Buzzsaw was here, where was the rest of the co-dependent freakshow?

Beating on a certain incommunicado Autobot newcomer, obviously. Bumblebee didn't wait for Buzzsaw to make the first move. He charged, firing his particle accelerator even as the Decepticon tried to bring his cannons up. The blast nearly sheared one of the shoulder-mounted weapons right off, and a shrill metallic screech filled the air. Buzzsaw spread the blade-edged panels that had formed the UAV's wings and made a swipe at Bumblebee.

One "feather" scraped across his chestplate as Bumblebee twisted aside, then dodged as Buzzsaw attempted to simply skewer him. Ducking under another swipe, Bumblebee went straight in and grappled at the Decepticon's wing. Talons kicked and gripped him around the torso, the serrated beak swung down and clamped over one shoulder. Minor armor breaches sent needle-spikes of pain shooting through his receptors, but Bumblebee only gripped the wing tighter and twisted.

He felt Buzzsaw's thrusters engage.

_Oh, no you don't!_

Before the Decepticon could even leave the ground, likely intending to drop Bumblebee from a lethal height, the Autobot planted his cannon square in the gap underneath Buzzsaw's chestplate, accessed reserve power, and fired.

The blast sent both robots reeling. Bumblebee tumbled to a stop some distance away, scratched, punctured and dented; Buzzsaw had fared much worse. Cables hung loose, burnt and raw, leaking fluids and sparks. Shrieking in rage and pain, the Decepticon flailed wildly as Bumblebee lurched to his feet.

He kept his cannon out and trained on Buzzsaw. It had been a gamble; using reserve power like that left him depleted, but Bumblebee was in no mood for a drag-out brawl. This needed to be finished quickly, before someone worse showed up. He stalked aggressively towards the Decepticon, letting his cannon hum threateningly. Out of power he might be, but Buzzsaw didn't know that.

The bluff paid off. Buzzsaw scuttled backwards, hissing angrily, and ground ungracefully into vehicle mode. He was airborne again in moments, trailing smoke.

"Bee! Bee, oh my god!" Sam was pelting out of the trees, Mikaela (somehow having wound up with the luggage) right behind him. "Are you okay? Who the hell was that?"

Bumblebee glared up at Buzzsaw's retreating shape in the night sky, angry rap pouring from his speakers. "See, I caught him with a right hook, caught him with a jab, caught him with an upper cut, kicked him in his ass. Sent him on his way cause I ain't for that talk--"

"Yes, you're made of badass." Mikaela thrust the bags into the boy's arms and came up closer, squinting in the darkness. "Are you hurt?"

Bumblebee shook his head, running diagnostics. Minor damage. His armor had taken most of the abuse, as was its purpose. "That was Buzzsaw," he rasped, and immediately regretted it. The power drain and slowly-healing damage left his voice raw and painful. He needed a recharge in the worst way.

But they needed to get away from this area, in case more old friends decided to put in appearances. He transformed to vehicle mode and popped open the doors, testing to see if communications were no longer being blocked. As his two humans climbed back in, he found the channels open and clear, so he immediately initiated contact with Optimus Prime.

Who was going to be even less happy than Bumblebee himself when he heard about this.

* * *

"Huh. It's my birthday."

Whiplash came out of a light recharge state to those words and tried to parse this out-of-nowhere statement. Nic was sitting up on the padded berth-- bed-- after spending about six hours in what passed for offline for her kind, a state she called sleeping and was, for humans, a natural rhythm tied to the rotation of the planet. Sleeping happened at night, though it could be overridden, but depriving oneself of sleep for too long, she said, could lead to serious problems. Not entirely unlike neglecting a recharge cycle. It was for this reason she had insisted on stopping for the night at an establishment called a _motel_. It was at places like this that humans on extended excursions could obtain a place to sleep in exchange for currency (a concept Whiplash wasn't quite sure he was clear on just yet, but it nonetheless involved a strange tiny plastic rectangle in her pack).

She had managed to get a room on the ground floor, and wheeled him right in, saying he could attract attention if she simply left him parked outside, and he agreed, even if it made the already small room a little cramped with him wedged between the bed and the wall. Nic managed to maneuver around just fine, going through a complicated set of pre-recharge rituals that mostly involved the cleansing and maintenance of the human body.

Whiplash was glad he only had to trigger a subroutine.

"Birthday?" he queried, puzzled. From what he understood, she was already a mature specimen of her species, so it couldn't mean she was being born this very moment. Or did she mean...?

"July first." Nic stretched where she sat, every muscle flexed and tensed for a moment, for whatever organic purpose that served. "I'm officially twenty-one years old now."

Ah, so it was commemorative mark of sorts. She had explained Earth timekeeping methods, using the motel room's equipped chronometer as an example, and--

Wait. "Twenty-one years? That's all?" Barely a quarter of a vorn?

Nic crossed her arms and gave the side of his vehicle form a pointed look. "Well, yeah, but I've been considered an adult since eighteen."

Though he was hardly an expert, Whiplash knew something of the manner in which organic life behaved. Cellular mitosis progressed in steady stages, creating a cycle which expanded, peaked, then diminished, and eventual total shutdown-- death; an inevitability rather than a possibility. And if the adult stage of a human began at a mere eighteen years... "Nic, at what age do humans generally... cease to function?"

By her pause he knew he had asked an awkward question. "If we're in decent health... I dunno, eighty, maybe a hundred years with care."

Whiplash sagged on his wheels in shock.

"Whip? What's the matter? I'm not going to up and croak on you right now, if that's what you're asking." She swung her legs off the bed and stood, regarding him curiously. "So... how old are _you_?"

Quickly calculating the conversion from vorn to year, he replied, "As you reckon time, I was first activated twenty-three thousand, eight hundred and seventeen years ago."

Her jaw dropped noiselessly open.

"Approximately," he added lamely, realizing with a start just how massive that number must have sounded to her. "I am... somewhat young for my kind."

"Well... so'm I." She pushed back her hair away from her face, only to have it tumble back into the unruly mass it had become during her sleep-cycle. "Uh. Wow. Twenty-three thousand-- wow."

Whiplash had a _wow_ of his own, but for the exact opposite reason. A hundred years, with luck and care. The impression he had been harboring of humans was that of a primitive but promising race... now he realized that they were incredibly advanced, incredibly clever, to have accomplished what he saw, what Nic had told him of this planet, in the short, unbelievably uncertain existence their biology imposed on them.

"I'm going to the lobby to grab some breakfast," she was saying, pulling on what she'd called 'leathers', her riding armor. "I'll be back in a minute." She paused at the door. "Wow."

* * *

Twenty-three thousand eight hundred seventeen-- approximately. Nic let out a low whistle as she walked along the side of the motel. Approximately! Leave it to a living computer to round off to a number that was pretty damned precise. Whiplash's kind probably knew their age down to the nanosecond. And he was _young?_ What was old? Fifty thousand? A million?

"Well, my gast has been sufficiently flabbered," she muttered, shaking her head. So ancient, so... young. It was hard to think of Whiplash as old, the way he acted.

A faint roll of thunder drew her attention skyward. It was one of those grey days, when cloud cover turned the sky into one uniform sheet of slate, diffusing the sunlight into a single dim, sourceless haze in which there weren't any shadows, but not any real light; and even then it made one want to squint constantly. The air tasted moist, and there was a good steady wind. This didn't concern Nic overmuch. Her leathers were fairly rainproof, and if they happened to hit a storm on the road, they'd pass through it fairly quickly. This was summer in Kansas, when the weathermen just resorted to waving randomly at their green-screens and hoping they got something right.

Having procured a suspiciously firm cinnamon roll and a foil-covered cup of orange juice, she returned to the room and dug out her cell phone, dialing as she repacked her backpack.

"Just checking in with my uncle," she said. "Then we check out and hit the road."

"I would rather roll on it," Whiplash replied.

Nic giggled. "It's an expression. Means the same thing." The phone rang tinnily at her ear. She poked warily at the cinnamon roll, the icing of which had solidified into one plasticky mass atop the room-temperature pastry. Her stomach suddenly rebelled against the thought of eating the past-due sweet, so she peeled open the orange juice.

"Nic!" Uncle Terry's voice greeted her.

"Not too early, is it?"

"No, I was just about to leave for the shop. Your name is mud, by the way."

"Aunt Marie blow a gasket?" Nic grinned. From beside the bed, Whiplash emitted a startled buzz. "Another expression, Whip, it just means I'm in for a lecture."

Over the phone, Terry chuckled. "English over dial-up, huh?"

"We're managing just fine. Just what did you tell Aunt Marie?"

"Much as I could without sounding like a kook. You got a new bike, met a guy who needed some help--"

Nic groaned.

"Yeah, _mea culpa._ She thinks you've run off with some biker bum who's going to leave you on the side of the road pregnant and penniless."

"Oh please. Tell her I have better sense than that. And that her brother-in-law was a very _nice_ biker bum, thank thee kindly."

"Got to get the woman off her true-crime shows. So where are you now?"

"Somewhere just outside of Colby. Probably cross Colorado today."

"You're making good time."

"Traffic wasn't too bad."

"So tell me... what's he like to ride?"

"Whiplash? Smooth as silk. And man, does he turn heads on the road." Nic glanced at said Tomahawk. Who didn't move but still seemed to preen appreciatively anyway. "The speed limit concept makes him twitch, though. After this is over, I should to find someplace where he can really cut loose. Really see what he's got."

"There are such places?" Whiplash cut in interestedly.

"Yes, Whip. Remind me to tell you about the Bonneville Salt Flats."

"Alien robot speed junkie." Nic could almost hear Terry shaking his head. "I hope you're being careful."

Nic couldn't help it-- "Don't worry, we're using protection."

A muffled thump. Terry had dropped the phone. Nic cackled gleefully.

"Nicole Breanna."

"I'm wearing my helmet. What did you think I meant? Dirty old man."

"Yeah, yeah, smartass. I've got to --" ...static, then "--the boys are already at the--"

Nic frowned at her phone as it hissed shrilly back at her, then dropped the call, its screen placidly informing her that there was no signal. "Nice. Thanks, Kansas weather." Stowing the phone in her pack, she shouldered the bag and turned to Whiplash. "Time to go."

They were silent the first few miles once they were back on the interstate. The clouds overhead had taken on a decidedly darker cast, but it still wasn't raining. Nic thought about letting Whiplash fudge the speed limit by five miles per hour, just to get through the threatening cloudbanks quicker.

"Nic," his voice, cutting through her worried contemplation of the weather, startled her as it resounded in her helmet, "what is an 'uncle'? Your tie to this Terry individual seems... close."

"An uncle," she explained, "is the male sibling of a parent. You know what a parent is?"

"One's creator, correct? Though judging by your dimorphism I assume humans must have two progenitors."

"That's right. In this case Terry is my father's brother. And yes, we're close. He's like a second father to me."

"What of your creators?" Whiplash asked. "I note that it is your uncle that you report to, instead of them."

_Observant,_ Nic thought with a sigh. It was fair, she supposed. He'd told her about the war. "My mother died when I was just a baby. I don't remember her at all. But my father... he died two years ago. Today."

"On your... birthday."

"His birthday too. It was a big thing. We'd have a huge party together. Then we'd go for a ride, just me and him. Every year, far back as I can remember. Me on the back of his Harley, until I was sixteen and he got me my first real motorcycle. A Honda." Nic let out a nostalgic chuckle. "The thing had all the horsepower of a hamster wheel. Without the hamster. But it looked like the best thing in the world to me then. No more dirt bikes or scooters, this was the real thing."

She realized she was probably babbling and Whiplash had no idea what she was talking about. But he surprised her.

"This Honda enabled you to ride with your progenitor as an equal."

Nic closed her eyes, remembering the putter-and-jerk of that old Honda. It had been a real piece of crap, to be sure, nowhere near the league of her father's beautifully restored '69 Harley, but Whiplash was right. With that bike, her father had officially made her a real biker, set her trustingly and proudly on her own two wheels. The next summer she had put in long work hours at her uncle's shop to buy a slightly newer, slightly more hamster-endowed motorcycle, but she really had had her heart set on eventually finding an old classic like her father's and fixing it up as he had done.

The powerful alien engine underneath her now gave a sudden surge, bringing her back to the present. She couldn't believe she had given this up for two years. _Forget the old Harley, girl. I do believe Whiplash has gone and spoiled you for Earth bikes. _She was about to say as much when his voice sounded in her helmet, this time low and tense.

"We are being followed."

"What?" Nic shifted to turn her head.

"No-- don't look." The timbre of Whiplash's engine changed again, subtly. "A vehicle has been keeping pace with us since Colby. I have shielded my energy signature but Rumble may have relayed my appearance."

"Are you sure it's a--"

"He is maintaining a constant distance, just beyond my scanners' beach. It's too deliberate."

_Reach?_ Nic mentally translated, and turned to take a quick peek anyway. Sure enough, not thirty feet behind, sidling casually into another lane, was a smallish low-slung sports car. It prowled out from behind an SUV, its shiny black finish seeming to swallow light rather than reflect.

"Whiplash," she murmured, "I think we can fudge the speed limit a little."

"Pit-bedamned damaged scanners..." 'A little' in Whiplash's lexicon meant a burst up to around eighty. Nic felt the handlebars move of their own accord, meaning he had taken over. They surged ahead, dodging through a flotilla of minivans and sedans. Nic stole another glance back, and sure enough, the black car was there, swerving through the obstructing traffic in a decidedly predatory manner.

To top it off, it started raining.

And a trio of semis hauling trailers clogged the highway ahead. Whiplash slowed slightly, and the black car drew near.

"Close enough to scan now-- _oh, slag._" From his tone, she didn't even have to ask what he'd found. "Nic--"

"Fuck the speed limit, Whip!"

Rain slapped angrily at her helmet as Whiplash flew ahead, riding the center line, aiming directly for the narrow gap between the big trucks ahead. It was a dangerous, stupid maneuver, hot-shot bikers got killed all the time pulling stunts like this. Nic shut her eyes and ducked her head down, hearing the terrifying roar of the massive wheels not even an arm's length away on either side. One of the trucks blared its horn as they passed, but in a split second they were clear and rocketing down open road at close to ninety-five.

Again Nic turned to look. Through the blur of her rain-streaked visor she saw the black car come screaming around the semis, careening on the shoulder of the interstate, kicking up gravel and dirt.

"_Maaaaaan_, that's just cheating."

"Hold on," Whiplash said, unnecessarily, and poured on the speed. Rain and wind washed over Nic in fitful blasts, cold water finding its way under her collar, up her sleeves, underneath the rim of her helmet. The speedometer swung past one hundred. One ten. One twenty-five. The wind was horrendous, not just from the speed alone but from gusts that came from the sides, threatening to unseat her.

One thirty.

"Is he still coming?" Nic shouted to be heard over the sharp snare drum-roll of rain and wind on her helmet. That same noise masked Whiplash's one-syllable reply.

Abruptly the rain stopped. The wind didn't. Nic twisted, keeping both hands locked on the handlebars, and looked back.

And really, _really_ wished she hadn't.

The black car had shed its four-wheeled form, now literally tearing up the road with four sets of flashing obsidian claws. It raced after them far, far too close behind, moving so fast it was just a blur of robotic limbs, gears and black metal, a terrorizing nightmare of a mechanical panther.

Nic jerked back to face forward, looking down at the speedometer: one forty-five and climbing. She looked up to gauge the road ahead; heaven help them if there was any sort of traffic.

Traffic, no.

Instead, a thick black column of wind and dirt and debris that stretched from sky to earth.

Nic's heart crawled straight up into her throat.

_Tornado._

* * *

_It is... beautiful_, Whiplash thought.

He supposed any planet with an atmosphere could experience such cyclonic formations, but he had never been on a planet long enough to actually see one. Cybertron, its own atmosphere having been strictly regulated by the currents of the Allspark, had only rarely seen disturbances such as this.

It had poured down out of the clouds, its narrow base pulsing and crawling like a living thing over the land, indifferent in the destruction it wrought. How had it formed so quickly? The conditions, masses of warm and cool air, dry and humid, all coming together at just the right moment to form this elegant vortex.

Nic was yanking hard at his handlebars. "_Turn around! We've got to get away from it!_"

Whiplash stayed his course. Turn around? When Ravage was right behind them, not even bothering to mask his presence, damaged scanners or no, clearly intending to make himself the last thing they ever saw? "We go forward," he said grimly, tactical algorithms alight with the beginnings of a plan.

"_Forward?! Crazy space robot, you're going to get us killed! That's a tornado!_"

"And behind us is Ravage," he reminded her pointedly, "who cannot be distracted with a rock, cannot be taunted with insults."

"Neither can the tornado! Whip--!"

"_Trust me._" He accelerated, heading right for the swirling maelstrom at the tornado's base. It was still a few miles away, giving him ample time to run calculations and plot trajectory. If he timed it right--

"_WHIP-- I'm slipping!_"

Horrified, he almost decelerated, but a snarl from behind reminded him what an ill-advised course of action that was. He could feel Nic, squirming to maintain her hold, fighting against the onslaught of wind that battered her from the side.

Couldn't slow down, couldn't keep going or the storm winds would tear her away, couldn't make a sharp enough turn at this speed without throwing her-- Whiplash wracked his processor-- a scout had to be able to think on the move, improvise and adapt. He was using his stabilizing gyros and mass-offset array in tandem to keep his grip on the road, but what of Nic?

"Whiplash--!"

"_Hold on!_"

Carefully, he initiated certain disparate parts of the transformation sequence. The entire lower third of his armor paneling separated from his chassis and slid upward. His system gave him a minor error message at the unorthodox move, and he felt weirdly naked underneath, but he could feel his rider stop struggling to stay on as the panels cupped protectively around her.

"Good... good," she panted. "But we're still headed right at a frigging tornado!"

"I know," he said distractedly. Whiplash never thought he'd be wishing for a simple space skirmish. This-- just staying upright, constantly adjusting and compensating for the chaotic wind that grew ever more chaotic the closer they drew to the tornado, holding the partially-executed transformed state, and fighting with his aching sensors to keep tabs on the relentless Ravage-- was definitely one of the more cracked stunts he had ever pulled. But if it _worked_...

Ravage was fast, to be sure, fast enough to catch him if he made one little mistake. But Whiplash was counting on the Decepticon's lack of ingenuity and single-mindedness.

"Just hold on," he said to Nic, closing his armor a little tighter over her. "This may get a little rough."

"What? Whip, you're not making any sense!"

_Not making sense-- slag, slag it all! _He could have sworn he'd said the right words, but faulty data would have to wait. He was staring down the barrel, so to speak, of the tornado.

He shot into the swirling cloud that swarmed the funnel's base, fighting to keep his wheels on the ground and avoid the larger chunks of flying debris. He kept his distance from the funnel itself, skirting the edge of the very worst of the chaos, trusting Ravage to be true to form...

Making the turn around the funnel, knowing full well the capricious storm could turn and slap him off his wheels, Whiplash watched as Ravage followed, and attempted to make a sharper turn to cut him off-- and was caught in the powerful pull of the tornado. The Decepticon was sent tumbling off and away, lost in the eddies of flying earth and debris.

Whiplash surged away and out of the dust cloud, bursting free of the nucleus of wind and debris. He let his armor fall back to its normal state, scanners reading Nic as respirating heavily, but unharmed.

The road ahead was clear, the clouds breaking to blue sky.

* * *

_Author's Note: go to sgxmusic(dot)com and download the song "Intense Color" (it's free, along with a lot of other awesome music!). "Intense Color" really helped me visualize that whole tornado scene, as well as being a damnspiffy piece of music._


	6. Catch Us If You Can

The sign miles back had said "Welcome to Colorado, The Centennial State" but it might as well have said "Welcome to Colorado, We Eat Babies" for all the attention Nic gave it. It wasn't even noon on her twenty-first birthday and she had played chicken with a tornado. Somewhere up in Heaven, she just knew, Eugene Darling was laughing his ass off.

"Nic? ...can you understand me?" Having been silent since the tornado, Whiplash's voice was hesitant.

She mentally shook herself out of the lingering shock. "Uh-- yeah?"

"Good. I was... concerned," he replied, audibly relieved. "You said I wasn't making sense. I was afraid my language data had become irreparably corrupt. My inception was that I was speaking normally."

Nic frowned. Whiplash's little word problem was becoming less of a cute, harmless quirk. What she had heard during the tornado was "_Dust fold gone, miss pay hit a brittle gruff_" turning a penchant for malapropism into full-blown word salad. She'd been too distracted at the time-- tornado and Decepticon and all-- to think about what he'd intended to say. He seemed to be doing better now, but... "Whiplash? Do you want me to keep letting you know when you do it? I don't want to annoy you but if you don't realize you're doing it..."

"Yes," he said immediately. "I need to correct the errors."

"Okay, well, just then you said inception when I think you meant perception."

He made a noise, a certain mechanical blip she was coming to suspect was a Cybertronian expletive. "They don't even _mean_ the same thing. This is maddening; diagnostics say there's nothing wrong with the data. I hope there is a competent medic in Optimus Prime's contingent. My diagnostic subroutines are obviously shot."

"Maybe it was the connection," she suggested. "You used what we call dial-up. It's not known for being very fast--"

A tinny snort from her robot friend.

"-- or reliable. Maybe that's why the data's all nuts." She thought for a second. "Maybe if we found a wi-fi hotspot?"

"Wi...fi?"

"A wireless connection. Usually pretty fast."

"Transmitted through airwaves, then. My receivers are destroyed, remember?"

And she supposed any net café owner would take a dim view of having a space robot peel open a Dell and chew on the modem. "Well, damn."

"Indeed."

Though the noise of wind and engine masked it, Nic felt her stomach pucker and gurgle. Whiplash's senses proved sharper: "Nic, your abdomen just emitted an odd noise."

She laughed. "Probably because all I had for breakfast was a cup of weak OJ." Now that she was paying attention, she felt slightly shaky, likely a combination of lack of food and the harrowing escape from Ravage by way of (holy _crap_) a tornado. "I need to get some food in me soon or I'll be in a bad way."

"You refuel in such small increments," he commented. "Perhaps you should take in enough to last for several days. Then we would only need stop to recharge."

"It, uh, doesn't work that way with us humans, Whip." She rolled her eyes. "Our bodies are a big balancing act. Too much of something good is bad, too little of something good is bad. If I gorge I could make myself sick, and we'd end up stopping for me to puke or something."

"Puke. Surely I have that word's definition wrong."

"Probably not."

"That's-- forgive me, that's disgusting."

"It's the human body's way of getting rid of something that might be harmful. Or a reaction to something disturbing. And yeah, it is disgusting." Hunger warred with the subject matter, and she made a face. She scanned the Interstate roadside for signs of an upcoming exit. "Less puke talk, please, more finding a burger joint."

"Joint?"

"It's an idiom. Slang," she explained. "It means a certain place."

Whiplash made a peculiar warbling hum. "A joint is a connection between parts, but also a location. What a language. No wonder I am having trouble." He sounded amused, so she assumed the warble was his equivalent to laughter.

"Heh. Yeah, slang does tend to be a little... weird. Like..." She giggled. "mind your p's and q's and let sleeping dogs lie, and everything'll be gravy and coming up roses, right as rain."

"You're making that up," Whiplash accused, another warble in his undertone.

"'Fraid not. Don't you have slang terms in your native language?"

"Yes, most of them being insults or invective of some sort. I've been called a glitch, scrap, a malfunction... or '_rrrrn-ksht[click]_' more than once by Decepticon fliers." He paused. "The closest translation would be 'one who is stuck on the ground.'"

_Flying_ Decepticons now. Nic craned her neck, scanning the sky, but it was only clear, uninterrupted blue, as if to make up for the almost-detour to Oz earlier.

"Well, right now, I'd like to be 'one who is filled with food'," Nic said, nudging gently at the handlebars. Whiplash bent to her direction, banking gently to an off-ramp where signs promised food and fuel at the crossroads of highway and interstate. The insignias of gas stations reminded her: "Hey, what do you run on?"

"My legs."

_Okay, now he's just being smartass._ "I mean, what do you refuel with?"

He made a noise, another word in the mechanical language, a multi-toned hum. "I'm not sure how to describe it to you." He paused. "My systems are currently at sixty-two point six percent power. It will be some time before I need to replenish my reserves, so for now it is only your fuel tank that needs attention."

* * *

It was a decent truck stop, as truck stops went. A general store, a modest greasy spoon that wasn't _too_ greasy, and a shower facility to boot. Sam had braved the showers first, reporting to Mikaela that it was clean, private, and even had a separate ladies' side, which was welcome news, since despite Sam's threat of dire B.O. neither teen wanted to stink up Bumblebee's interior.

Mikaela leaned back, propping herself on her elbows on the picnic table behind her. She wondered, did he even mind human body odor?

Something to ask when the robot 'woke up', she mused, gazing at the scratched and dented yellow and black vehicle parked nearby. Bumblebee was in deep recharge, basking in the bright sunlight to boost the regenerative process. After several hours, some of the smaller scratches had noticeably smoothed over, which did much to reassure Mikaela that Bumblebee's injuries weren't serious. She knew the fight with this Buzzsaw bastard could have gone a lot worse.

So they had cruised on through the night, finally stopping here, just past Denver, at dawn, Bumblebee explaining through snippets of song that he would recover much faster making good use of solar power. At least, that was what she and Sam had gotten from "--I'll find a place to rest-- _*fshht*_ -- recharge your batteries-- _*fzzss*_ --Iiiiiiii'm gonna soak up the suuuuuuun-- _*kshh*_-- Give me a few hours, I'll have this all sorted out--"

Sam was now in the diner procuring some food for the both of them. They had taken turns leaving Bumblebee for showering, by some unspoken consensus loath to leave their friend alone even in this relative safety.

"That had better contain caffeine," she commented, seeing Sam approach with a pair of drinks and a paper sack tucked under an arm.

"If it doesn't, the sugar's going to do the trick anyway." He set the food down on the table and didn't quite contain a yawn. "I think this is some funky off-brand cola, just so you're forewarned."

Mikaela let loose her own yawn, prompted by Sam's. "_Nyaaah_. Don't do that. I didn't sleep at all."

"Me neither," Sam confessed. "Kept waiting for Buzzard to drop down outta the sky."

"Buzzsaw," Mikaela corrected, pawing through the bag for a paper-wrapped burger.

"No, I'm pretty sure any jackhole who takes potshots at us deserves to be called Buzzard." Sam took a thoughtful pull on his drink and sat down next to her. "And I'm being polite." Unwrapping his own burger, he gestured at Bumblebee. "How's he doing?"

"Still doing his best car impression. Some of the dents popped while you were getting food." She stole a few french fries from him. For a few minutes they both ate in silence, then she asked, "So... have you thought about what you're going to tell your folks?"

"About?" Sam blinked confusedly for a second. "Oh. Bee. Man, I was doing a good job of avoiding the issue 'till you said something."

Mikaela rolled her eyes and draped an arm around his shoulders on the pretext of stealing more fries. "Sorry."

"Are you going to tell your dad?"

"I'm not the one who has an inexplicably hot car parked in my driveway."

"Inexplicably?" Sam arched an eyebrow. "What, a guy like me can't have a smokin' ride? Only thing inexplicable about Bee is his tendency to turn into a fifteen-foot-tall robot. It's the inexplicably hot girlfriend I find so inexplicable."

Sam paused then, burger halfway up to his mouth, as he realized what he had just said. Mikaela slowly grinned. He hadn't used that word yet, _girlfriend,_ not to describe her. And having said it aloud, he looked as if he were holding a soap bubble and waiting for it to pop and vanish.

It was so damned cute.

She popped a french fry into his slack mouth, then leaned close and bit off the half of fry sticking out, their lips brushing briefly before she drew back, smiling. "Not quite so inexplicable, LadiesMan."

Sam swallowed, still slightly dazed. "I-- sorry, what were we talking about?"

"Our abuse of a two-dollar word or what you're going to tell your parents about Bee?"

"I'd like to abuse expensive vocabulary some more. Maybe it will lead to more french fries."

"No more french fries until we decide what your story's going to be."

A woeful pout. "Not even inexplicable french fries?"

"We really _are_ sleep-deprived. That made no sense." Mikaela stood, stretching. "I'm going to the little girls' room. Don't eat my burger."

She strode lazily off, knowing full well he was watching her walk away. That feeling was so different with Sam, not like any other guy she'd been with. Never an ogle with him. Hormonal, yes, but _respectfully_ hormonal; he didn't _presume_ to have her. Rambly, adorable, infinitely sweet, perhaps a bit oblivious to some things, sharply aware of others, and always aware of her. After hanging off the arms of alpha cavemen, she found Sam a cool breeze, one she wanted to hold onto. Why had it taken an alien invasion to make her see him?

She neared the bathrooms, and saw it.

A blue... thing.

It looked like a motorcycle only at first glance. Long, built like a torpedo, with four-- four?-- wheels, as if the normal two wheels had been split through. _If George Jetson had been a Hell's Angel?_ she thought, trying to decide whether she thought the machine was oddly beautiful or just plain odd.

Then something clicked in her mind. The video Bumblebee had shown them.

_One of those robots had been small and blue._ Mikaela suppressed a squeak. Assuming that that purple one was Bee-sized, this freaky motorcycle-thing was about the right size, if she had to guess.

Mikaela told herself to settle down; this weirdass bike could be just a weirdass bike. People were building strange custom vehicles all the time. She moved in closer to get a better look... and maybe have a chat.

But someone brushed by her, just barely clipping her shoulder with a crisp, but very blunt "Excuse me."

The young woman marched straight for the blue bike and swung about, planting herself square at its side, between Mikaela and the machine. Plain black helmet under one arm, water bottle tucked under the other, a half-eaten cheeseburger in one hand, she stood and regarded Mikaela with a calm, direct, but challenging gaze.

"Can I help you?" the leather-clad biker asked flatly.

"I was just..." Mikaela gestured at the bike. "What kind of motorcycle is that?"

"Experimental," was the curt reply. "Custom built. I'm testing it." The biker took a bite of her burger, gray eyes never leaving Mikaela.

"That must have cost a lot to build," Mikaela commented, looking over the sleek blue and turquoise paint job, and the gleaming chrome of the wheels and undercarriage. "Must be murder to keep clean, too."

"I manage," the biker replied, her level tone dipping into annoyed. She plunked her helmet on the seat and leaned back against the bike. "Look, I really--"

Mikaela leaned over, trying to get a look around the rider's legs. "What kind of engine is that? V-6, V-8? It's _huge_."

"V-10," said the biker, with no small touch of pride in her voice. "I, uh, I really can't tell you much more than that. Experimental and all..."

As Mikaela tried to lean in to look at the instrument panel, the rider again interposed herself between Mikaela and the machine. She looked about her own age, the rider's five-foot height and overabundance of freckles making it hard to guess an exact age. Her posture and the look in her eyes was anything but girlish and youthful, though. The message was clear: do not pop the personal bubble.

Mikaela still wavered. Could be overprotective biker keeping fingerprints off her shiny, or overprotective human keeping people from poking an Autobot. _Ah, screw it, let her think I'm crazy if I'm wrong._ "This is going to sound a little weird, but does this motorcycle ever--"

The biker suddenly jumped as if slightly startled, frowned, one gloved hand going down to rest on the bike's bright blue flank for a moment. Taking one last big bite of burger, she tossed the remainder of the food into a nearby trash can and shoved the water bottle into her backpack. After a hasty swallow, the biker took up her helmet and smoothly swung a leg over the bike. "Listen, I hate to be rude, but I'm kind of on a tight schedule. The competition is really nasty."

And with that, she leaned low over the bike's chassis, grabbed the handlebars, and the motorcycle's engine roared, pivoting neatly on its rear wheels to get out of the parking space. Mikaela stepped back out of the way, unable to even draw the breath needed to yell over the noise in the time it took for the motorcycle, rider and all, to go flying through the parking lot toward the highway.

The bike, Mikaela had noticed, had started up without so much as a push of a button or turn of a key. She ran full speed back towards Bee and Sam.

* * *

It hadn't been easy, trying to get Nic's attention without alerting the other female human. A few well-placed nigh-imperceptible twitches of an armor plate had done the trick, and Nic had mounted up, leaving the too-inquisitive female behind.

"Okay, what's wrong? She wasn't being that nosy."

"There is a Decepticon here," he explained, trying to mute his engine noise as much as possible. "I cannot scan at this distance, but I observed visual evidence of a Cybertronian regenerative system."

"Uh, what?"

"A yellow vehicle. Its exterior shows signs of damage, but as I watched, some of it repaired itself."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, how do they keep finding us?"

"I don't know. My dampening field is fully operational. But we are in luck; such marked regeneration only occurs in a deep recharge state."

"You mean he's asleep?"

"Yes, Nic."

"Then let's get the hell out of here before he wakes up."

"I fully contend to."

"Intend?"

Whiplash resignedly vented exhaust as he slid up behind an idling vehicle, waiting for the traffic signal to re-enter the highway. He could not _wait_ to get this glitch fixed.

* * *

Sam mused sleepily to himself that he'd never seen a girl so jazzed to have gone to the bathroom. Until his brain processed what she was yelling as she was running back towards him.

"--found him! Sam, I think we found him!"

"Found who? Oh-- _oh!_" He was on his feet before he realized he'd even moved. "What, you mean new guy?"

"Look, look down that way, at the light," Mikaela grabbed his arm and pointed down to the other end of the lot. "Blue motorcycle."

Sam squinted at the speck of blue queued at the exit. "Are you sure?"

"It started by _itself_." She spun about and hovered at Bumblebee's hood. "How do we wake him up?"

"I dunno," Sam joined her and leaned over to give the Camaro's hood a polite knock with a knuckle. No response. "I've never tried before, maybe it's like with a phone battery, you have to let him recharge all the way--"

"Crap, the light's changing." Mikaela glanced around for possible spectators, then brought her open hand down on the hood with a sharp smack, right between the racing stripes. "Bee! Wake up, we've got to move!"

The car gave a startled alarm-_chirpchirp_, headlights flashing, and rose up on his shocks a little.

"Mikaela thinks we found new guy," Sam hastily explained, craning to try to see the bike in question. A blue blip swung out onto the highway.

"Not think, I'm positive," she insisted. "The rider definitely did this nonverbal thing with it, she was way defensive--"

Sam blinked. "Rider?" Actual human rider, or a projection, like what he had seen Barricade use?

"Bike started without her doing anything, she just got on." Mikaela was almost dancing with impatience at this point. "Blue bike, just made a right down at the light, can you scan him from here?"

A short pause.

Then the doors flew open.

* * *

_My luck may be bad, but at least it is consistent,_ Whiplash thought to himself, catching a flash of yellow in his rear optic array. He kept to the fifty-five speed limit for long enough to visually confirm that it was the same vehicle, black-striped and bearing superficial armor damage, then sped up.

"Whiplash," came Nic's voice, a patient but chiding tone. "We're close to Denver city limits, you have to slow down."

"Nic, I don't wish to alarm you, but--"

Quick to figure it out, she twisted to look back. "Oh, _balls_."

Making a note to himself to ask her later just what _that_ was supposed to mean, he gauged the traffic ahead. Not crowded enough to hide in, more than open enough to be seen. "Hold on. Once we return to the interstate I will break the limit again."

"Who's this one?"

Just as he hadn't known Rumble and Ravage until they had shown their true colors, there was no way to tell for sure. "I don't know... but I may need to go much faster than I did with Ravage."

"And we're fresh out of tornadoes. Wait-- don't get on the interstate, we should cut through the city."

"What? Why?" To judge by the amount of vehicles headed in that direction from multiple inroads, the traffic would be-- perfect to hide in. "Yes, I see." He followed the highway as it curved away from the interstate exit, joining the stream of traffic.

"Let him follow," he growled. "I will make him chase his own exhaust."

* * *

_"I am Autobot Bumblebee. I'm here on Optimus Prime's orders. We've been looking for you-- pull in behind me and follow to a secure location."_

No response. Bumblebee repeated the transmission as he sped down the highway after the bright blue motorcycle. Still nothing.

_"Unidentified Autobot: slow down and respond". _He had only confirmed that it was indeed a Cybertronian by the bubble of nothingness his sensors touched. Typical of someone who was running a dampening field full-force, just as Buzzsaw had been doing, without realizing that the sheer amount of stuff in Earth's atmosphere made a blank spot glaringly obvious. The trick was to modulate the field, tighten the frequency.

_"Respond... identify yourself, tell me to slag off, anything."_ Perhaps the newcomer was put off by the flat digital code, but his voice was still in no state to be used. Bumblebee could already hear Ratchet's I-told-you-so.

"All this time, he was headed out towards us," Sam was saying. "Man, Mikaela, we'd be looking for crop circles in Kansas by now if you hadn't spotted him."

"Wonder how he managed to pick up that rider," she said.

"If she paid less than four grand for him, I'm going to scream," Sam replied, and cheekily Bumblebee sent a quick hack to the boy's cell phone.

'FRANKLY, I THINK YOU UNDERPAID' the text message read.

"Yeah, 'Uncle Bobby B' said you were worth five, right?"

"Boys," Mikaela cut in. "Could we focus?"

Ahead, the motorcycle had slowed, boxed in on both sides by a couple utility vans and a pickup truck in front. Bumblebee pulled up behind and dropped his own dampening field, thinking that if the other could see him as a fellow Autobot, perhaps he might listen to the transmissions.

With a sudden kick of speed, the blue bike swerved and knifed into the adjacent lane, inches away from the truck's tailgate and causing the van on that side to honk. The bike surged ahead, and Bumblebee had to negotiate across two lanes in order to get past the vans.

_"Autobot, you're risking your human passenger's safety with maneuvers like that. Stand down and respond!"_

"What the _hell_ kind of bike is _that_?" demanded an incredulous Sam.

* * *

"Geez, Whip! Warn me next time!" Nic shifted, reseating herself.

"Sorry." Uncharacteristically terse, Whiplash slipped neatly into the leftmost lane, accelerating to a chorus of honking from the stationwagon he cut off. "He didn't transform. Dampening field went down. If he's not attacking, why did he drop his field?"

"Rumble and Ravage didn't transform until they had us alone," Nic said, hoping this yellow one was under the same orders or protocol or whatever rules governed this battlefield. "We need to keep this thing on the highway and on wheels."

Bright yellow loomed up on the right. Aside from the dents and scratches it looked like a rather nice sports car, something slick and snub-nosed and really high-end, if she was any judge. It edged carefully across the lanes toward them, until it was close enough for her to clearly read the Camaro nameplate-- and, through a lightly tinted window, briefly meet the eyes of the driver, a baffled-looking teenage boy.

"Whiplash, there's-- _aahshit!_" And _there_ was the mule-kick she had seen in the web videos of the Tomahawk's performance, and only her already tense grip on the machine beneath her kept her from jolting loose as Whiplash rocketed forward.

"There's a driver," she tried again, unconsciously yelling, not looking at the speedometer because she just knew it would be some downright suicidal number in lunchtime traffic. "There's a human in that car!"

"Holographic projection. Decepticon trick."

"--oh." Nic felt slightly creeped out. It made sense, in a way. Their ability to mimic, to blend in, was their key survival tactic. It followed that there could be some way to simulate what couldn't be configured with machinery. She frowned down at the blue metal. Could Whiplash do that?

A horn honked out shave-and-a-haircut, coming up fast behind them. Nic could feel Whiplash's engine's subtle pitch this time, and she put a hand on his instrument panel. "Easy," she murmured.

His acceleration was a little smoother this time, but not by much. "What is he playing at?" he demanded, his voice more agitated than she had ever heard from him before.

"Easy," she repeated. "Don't let him push you. If he wants to dance, we need to set the pace. Remember what you told me? No one outruns you."

* * *

Whiplash was angry.

Angry in that slow, boil-your-coolant way that he had inflicted on many a Decepticon in the past, and he didn't much care for the taste of his own tricks. For one, he knew if he didn't regulate his processor quickly, he could wind up doing something stupid.

This Decepticon was _toying_ with him. Laying open his energy signature for even Whiplash's dulled, aching sensors to see, coming up behind only to keep apace, rather than attack outright, not trying to herd or bully, just... chasing. It would only be a matter of time, he knew, before his enemy grew bored and went in for the kill.

Whiplash heard Nic's words and surged forward, weaving into the traffic with new determination. She was right. Whiplash had made pursuit a skill, his specialization, his reputation. The chase was _his_, no matter what the chaser thought.

A vehicle not far ahead suddenly belched from its aft a cloud of black exhaust, and Whiplash reflexively closed his forward intake vents. But as they plowed into the fumes, he noticed something interesting. The exhaust particles, as they passed through his dampening field, seemed to vanish from his close-proximity sensors, only to reappear once past.

_Of course!_ That was how the other had, before dropping his field, seemed to be a mere car. He laughed aloud, already making adjustments.

"What?"

"I know how he found me," he smugly told his rider. "But it won't happen again. The fool just showed me how to better hide myself."

* * *

Sam shook his head appreciatively as the blue whatchamacallit again sped ahead.

"V-10 in a motorcycle. Insane." Mikaela echoed his sentiment nicely. "The four wheels thing is throwing me. What_ is_ that?"

"Like a motorcycle and an ATV got together and had a really fast baby," Sam added, then shut himself up, because lord only knew where that metaphor would end up if he let his mouth run with it.

Sam's cell phone beeped, still in his hand from the last text Bumblebee had sent. This one read 'SOMETHING IS WRONG'

Resisting the urge to educate his guardian on the meaning of the term 'duh-ism', Sam passed the phone to Mikaela so she could see it. "New guy still not talking to anyone, I take it."

'I MIGHT AS WELL BE TRANSMITTING TO A SPEED BUMP'

"Maybe he's afraid that purple guy who was wailing on him is going to, I dunno, intercept the transmission or something?" Mikaela shrugged at Sam. "Decepticons do that?"

"Or..." Sam knocked his head back against the seat as a realization hit him. "..or he thinks Bee is a Decepticon."

The radio snapped on. "--And don't insult me, I won't insult you--"

Sam innocently spread his hands. "Hey, just a theory, dude."

"--I'm on your side, You know I'm not the enemy--" Bumblebee let the Divinyls express his indignation.

"Yeah, someone tell Speedy Smurf," Sam retorted.

Mikaela grabbed his shoulder. "Um, guys, where'd he go?"

* * *

Nic grinned as Whiplash cut across lanes again, this time cutting speed to let a massive charter bus shield them from sight. A gaggle of tourists gawked from the bus's windows, faces up against the glass. Brassily Nic lifted a hand to wave at them.

"Turning heads, am I?" Whiplash asked, sounding inordinately pleased with himself for evidently having figured out how to foil the Decepticon's senses somehow. "Hold fast. I may need to employ some interesting maneuvers."

_More interesting than a tornado?_ she wondered, as Whiplash dropped slowly back even further, edging around the back of the bus. When she could see around it, incredibly the yellow Camaro was now ahead of them by several car-lengths and two lanes to the right. Incredibly, it gave no indication of slowing. Whatever Whiplash had done, it was working.

With an aggressive swerve and burst of acceleration, the Tomahawk flew across the highway and went roaring right up behind the Camaro.

* * *

Startled exclamations in three-part harmony-- Sam's "Hoshit!", Mikaela's less articulate squeak, and Bumblebee's spin through a dozen staticky stations-- rang through the interior of the Autobot's cabin as a blue blur was behind, beside, then _gone_ in one instant. The other had passed so close on Bumblebee's right that the rider could have reached out to knock on a window, and was now speeding toward an off-ramp for an adjoining highway that would take them deeper into Denver.

Bumblebee veered sharply to follow, drawing one-fingered gestures and honking from the vehicles he cut off, radio snapping on: "--Slow down, you're gonna crash--"

"Where did he come from?!" Sam twisted in the driver's seat, while Mikaela simply shook her head, muttering about V-10 engines.

Bumblebee's own engine pounded as he rushed after, eight cylinders pulsing at a rate no earth-made V-8 could match. He was feeling an odd combination of annoyance and amusement at the absurdity of the situation. He didn't think his behavior was particularly Decepticon-like; couldn't the newcomer see that? Why wasn't he listening? And the blatant come-from-behind baiting-- the newcomer _wanted_ to provoke him.

_"Well, you have my attention,"_ he transmitted, whether he was heard or not. "_A game of tag now, is it? Ready or not, here I come."_

But-- how to slow him down without endangering the humans?

* * *

Sad to say, Nic was actually kind of enjoying this.

Speed had never been her thing; she typically fell on the tortoise side of the tortoise/hare dichotomy the biker philosophy had divided itself into. She liked a slow cruise, preferred to see scenery clearly rather than through a motion-blur filter. The road wouldn't get any shorter for her sake, she had always reasoned. It was an attitude she had inherited from her father, an easygoing free spirit who had disdained (albeit in a very laid-back and forgiving manner) those bikers who rode the slick little speed-demon bikes and were consequently always in such a blasted hurry.

But with all apologies to Eugene Darling and that sturdy old Harley, she was starting to see the appeal.

Speedometer waving between eighty and ninety, Whiplash fairly danced among the other vehicles, weaving in and around them as gracefully as a bird in flight. She was learning to move with him as he banked and turned, learning to anticipate.

And really, _really_ liking the speed.

Taking glances back, she could spot flashes of yellow in the gaps between cars, gaining one moment, getting lost in the shifting current of vehicles the next. "He's still there," she reported. "How long can you keep this up? Sooner or later we're either going to leave the city or attract some police attention."

Whiplash took advantage of a stretch of open road to accelerate, making for the next knot of sheltering traffic ahead. "I'm not sure. He is... rather agile, I'll give him that."

As they slowed to maneuver back in among the traffic, the yellow Camaro came flying up behind. Whiplash pitched into another lane, cutting in front of a pizza delivery cab, reminding Nic's stomach that it still wanted food, having only had a third of a very nice bacon cheeseburger and not much else.

And then food became the least of her concerns as the traffic began to work against them. An eighteen-wheeler towing a flatbed of pine logs blocked to the right, pizza-boy to the rear and an SUV to the front, and a certain Camaro sidling casually up on the left. Nic eyed it nervously, giving Whiplash's handlebars what she hoped was a reassuring squeeze, hoping he wouldn't panic...

A girl of maybe sixteen or seventeen stared back at her from the passenger window, waving and mouthing words, the same teenage boy, hands not on the steering wheel but flashing big friendly OK signals, and--

"--we be friends, why can't we be friends? Why can't we be--"

Music?

"What the--" She found herself echoing her friend's earlier question-- just what was this guy playing at?

Whiplash said something, a string of liquid syllables and electronic noise, then edged to the right and cut speed. They dropped back, riding the line between lanes, so close to the trailer that bits of pine bark and stray needles were raining down on them. Once behind the trailer, Whiplash curled right, hopping lanes and passing _underneath_ the trailing ends of the bobbing logs, a move that made Nic hold her breath and forget all about cheeseburgers and pizza and _deargodthespacerobotiscrazy_.

Whiplash kicked ahead again, on the other side of the logger truck, and in the distance she spotted an overpass.

And then it was _deargodI'mthecrazyonehere._

"Whiplash! Jump!" She couldn't believe she was letting the words even make it to her mouth. "The overpass ahead, jump!"

A short pause. "I'll have to transform."

Nic tensed, preparing herself. "I trust you."

* * *

"Did she even see us?" Sam ran hands through his hair, at a complete loss. "Just what is that guy's damage?"

"She looked right at me. I know she saw us," Mikaela said, leaning up over the dashboard, trying to see around the logger as Bumblebee navigated around it.

"Look-look, there he is, there he is." Hunching forward as well, Sam reflexively grabbed the wheel. "Gun it, Bee!" But damn, new guy was fast. And slippery. If they couldn't pin him down somehow...

"Ohmy_god!_" Mikaela grabbed his arm, and Sam's mouth fell open as the blue motorcycle seemed to almost detonate in a flurry of flashing mechanical parts.

* * *

It occurred to Nic in an infinitesimal instant that there would have been no way to rehearse the maneuver, given that it never should have occurred to her in the first place, and she hoped the occasion never arose again.

But the instant was gone, and with a warning shudder of plates beneath her, Whiplash transformed as the overpass loomed close.

She let go and pushed up and off, handlebars whipping out of reach, her body leaving Whiplash's for a single heart-stopping moment. His wheels cycled around, slamming into place on his back, and she immediately grabbed back on, gloved hands finding a firm grip on the hot rubber of the topmost tire. Toes of boots dug into the rim of the bottom wheel.

He had transformed so fast she hardly knew when exactly he had gone from wheels to feet, but now he was running full-tilt, the pounding of his legs not unlike the pounding of his engine. Much to her relief, he bent one arm back around to hold her gently in place where she clung. Taking one great stride as the overpass was upon them, Whiplash's body seemed to coil and gather, and--

In one explosive spring, they were airborne.

Up and over the edge of the bridge, vaulting the barrier, swinging long chrome legs over, hitting the asphalt running again, to a chorus of honking and startled screeching of tires from the cars around them. Several more strides and Whiplash pitched forward, and Nic knew-- she let go again. Wheels flew out from under her, armor reconfigured and the handlebars swung back into place, which she latched onto instantly. And in one body-jolting slam, wheels were back on the road and she in the seat; a little off-balance, not quite in the right position, but intact, alive, and very much in need of a bathroom break and possibly a good faint.

Whiplash rocketed on, weaving through the traffic as he had done before. Dizzy and nearly deaf from the thundering of her own heart in her ears, Nic looked back several times as the road wound off and into a less-densely populated area.

No yellow Camaro came in pursuit.

Denver behind them entirely, and the road was open and clear and theirs alone. Nic finally remembered to breathe, and lay a hand on the sky-blue fairing.

"Whiplash?"

"Yes, Nic?"

"Best. Birthday. Ever."

* * *

"Did you see that? _Did you see that?!_"

Bumblebee felt the thumping on his steering wheel that was Sam failing to contain himself in his driver's seat. Too late to check his speed before going right under the overpass, Bumblebee instead careened across the highway and cut right over the shoulder, up a grass embankment and onto an on-ramp leading to the overpass. It cost precious seconds, and by the time he'd managed to even make it to the spot the newcomer had jumped to, there was no sign, by optic or sensor, of any motorcycle at all.

At least there weren't any accidents, the scout noted, and found a place to pull over.

"Oh my god, Bee," Mikaela murmured. "I think... I think we just got _schooled._"

"Holy frijoles," Bumblebee employed the voice of a fictional animated rodent, "That theeng runs faster than me!"

"So what do we do now?" Sam asked.

"Delays, delays," tsk-tsked another fictional character's voice. "Oh dear, this is most inconvenient, now I'll have to call out the reserves."

"Yeah, maybe the others can intercept him." Mikaela brightened.

"If he doesn't just pull the same Roadrunner act," Sam sighed, sinking in the seat.

Bumblebee emitted a bright "Meep-Meep!" in response, drawing the desired reaction-- a laugh-- from his two humans.

"Smartass," Sam chuckled.

"Please, sir, do not interrupt my chain of thought. I'm a busy Martian."

"We're on a Mel Blanc kick now, I see," Mikaela said, rolling her eyes.

Bumblebee opened communications. "_Bumblebee here, Prime. I had him."_

_"Explain, Bumblebee."_

_"I caught up with the newcomer outside Denver, but he's still not responding to any transmissions. He doesn't recognize me as an Autobot, either. He spooked, sir. I lost him heading southwest out of Denver."_

_"You spooked him?"_ came in Ratchet.

_"Sam posits that he thinks I am a Decepticon."_

Ironhide cut in with a snort. "_You? That's rich."_

_"I'm glad you find it so amusing, Ironhide,"_ Bumblebee sent, wishing the digital signal could properly convey smugness, "_because he's likely headed in your direction. Good luck catching him. He's barely half my size and built specifically for speed. His altmode is interesting-- a search of the internet reveals a design similar to a Dodge Tomahawk. He's heavily modified it, from what I can tell. And-- he has a rider."_

Optimus made an interested noise. _"A rider?"_

_"A human female roughly Mikaela's age, from what she saw of her. Mikaela also says the rider is likely working in tandem with the Autobot."_

_"At least,"_ Optimus Prime said, _"he is not alone."_

_

* * *

  
_

_...man, I feel like I need a nap after writing that._

_Author's Note: I know absolutely nothing about the highway system in Denver, having never been there, or Kansas for that matter, so any geographical mistakes you find... well, movieverse Earth is different, ya rly._

_And now I'm going to point you back to sgxmusic(dot)com(slash)music(dot)htm and grab the track "Crowdpleaser" (not the "Drop the Mic" remix, but the original) and there you have the music that fits the chase scene. While you're there, pick up "Distant" as well, which is Whiplash's early loneliness to a perfect T._

_...no, SGX isn't paying me to plug his music. I swear._


	7. S N A F U

_"Gibberish?"_

_"That's right. He said something to me when I had him cornered. Nothing nice, by his tone, but I couldn't understand an iota of it."_

_"...that's... troubling, Bumblebee."_

_"What I find troubling, Ratchet, is that Buzzsaw tried to see how high an Autobot can bounce last night, and I will bet you my left cannon that the Decepticon in that internet video is Rumble. I don't have to close this circuit for you to figure out who else is skulking around, do I?"_

_"Ironhide, Frenzy apparently broke ties with them long ago and was here with Barricade. It's not too much to suppose that perhaps after all this time, Rumble and Buzzsaw may have done the same. It's entirely possible they are here on their own. Let's hope this is the case. With so few of us here--"_

_"--and one of us glitching so badly that he can't tell his aft from his faceplate--"_

_"That was uncharitable, Ironhide. We don't know his full situation."_

_"We don't even know his slagging name. I'll be charitable when he stops running from his own people. Prime, if what I fear is true, and he is here..."_

_"Then we will need a defensible position. I had hoped to have more of us gathered before another confrontation with the Decepticons, but it seems we may have little say in the matter."_

_"Should we regroup, then?"_

_"Not yet. We must find the newcomer first. He is too tempting a target by himself, and I am in no mood to see another death so soon."_

* * *

Nobody knew when exactly the hulking blue-grey vehicle had appeared, parked illegally on the curb in eastern Topeka.

The Eyesore hadn't seen this much action since the last illicit rave. Cordoned off with yellow police tape, crawling with bomb technicians, police, some curious onlookers and passers-by, and a couple of reporters perched smartly in front of cameras on what was otherwise a slow news day, the half-built shell of a building was practically abuzz with activity. Half-bored, matter-of-fact activity, but still more than the abused wreck was accustomed to.

Somehow, without anyone really noticing any movement, the grey vehicle had moved closer, across the street from the Eyesore.

Subtly, the atmosphere changed.

A child, young enough to still be held on the mother's cocked hip, began crying. One of the reporters developed a horrific stutter and had to wave for the camera to cut. The onlookers glanced nervously about, expressions drawn tight and wary.

One police officer stumbled out beyond the construction fence in a full-blown panic attack, and this seemed to touch off a chain of reaction. The onlookers were first, hurrying away unnerved, muttering and tugging on equally unnerved spouses, friends, children. The team of bomb techs milled uncertainly about in the interior of the building, their work forgotten. A police squad car, occupied by the first panicking officer, peeled out of the parking lot as if desperate to escape.

The bomb techs were next, equipment hastily crammed into cases and thrown into the van. Followed by the reporters, after seeing the wide-eyed, aimless fear on the faces of the remaining cops. And only when the last of the squad cars had departed did the grey vehicle deign to move.

Massive tires crawled up and over the curb. The vehicle rolled unhurried across the parking lot and through the construction fence, flattening a section of the sturdy partition as if it were no more solid than a sheet of wet cardboard. And with the same indifferent aplomb, the vehicle moved through the wide lobby doorway --which had been cleared of rubble-- and vanished into the dark interior of the Eyesore.

Long minutes passed.

At length the hulking grey vehicle reappeared. It prowled back over the crushed section of fence and into the lot. Right at its rear bumper, scratched, dented and covered with dust, fitfully revving and grinding, a small purple car followed. First the armored vehicle, then the purple compact, rolled out of the lot and into the street, one steady, the other erratic.

One block behind, Terry Darling sat in his car, ignoring the cooling pizzas sitting in the passenger seat as he watched the two vehicles leave the Eyesore and move down the road. Slowly he released his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, as well as a shaky breath, and fumbled for his cell phone.

* * *

"I think we're a little lost."

Nic and Whiplash had stopped at a gas station somewhere out in the Rockies. At least, at some point in the distant past it might have been a gas station, or roadside convenience store at the very least, but it was weather-beaten and crumbling now, the only sign of human presence they had come across all afternoon.

She folded her hands behind her back and thought that there were worse-looking places to be lost in. Aside from the blemish of the abandoned store, the view was gorgeous. The hillside dropped sharply away from the other side of the road, treating them to a wide vista of mountains limned gold in the reddened setting sunlight.

Their wild flight out of Denver had taken them far off course. She had no idea where the interstate was now, and every turn on state highways seemed to lead them down smaller and more obscure paths. Route markers meant nothing to her, less to Whiplash, and after wandering like a couple of befuddled tourists through increasingly rural country, they had agreed a short break to get their bearings wouldn't be too amiss.

The soft rattle and rasp of mechanical limbs behind her made her turn around. Whiplash felt safe enough here to stretch out of his vehicle mode, and as he came to stand beside her he looked down to meet her eyes. Nic gave him a small smile. Hearing his disembodied voice ring in her helmet was okay enough, but it was nice to have a face to talk to for a change.

"What we seek is further westward, correct?" he said, taking in the Rockies with a sweeping gesture. "And do the road systems extend beyond the mountains?"

"There are roads everywhere," she replied. "It's easy to get turned around. Like we are now. I was kind of hoping this place would have some maps, or at least a working bathroom." And food. She was beginning to wish she'd thought to buy snacks to stash in her pack. At this point, she'd have given a vital organ for a bag of Cheetos.

Even better, her cell phone was one blip away from battery death, and only picking up a weak signal for fractions of a second at a time.

Whiplash shifted, gears quietly whirring, six long metal 'toes' splayed like a pair of tripods in the weedy gravel. "This planet's geomagnetic field... is it mixed?"

"...mixed?" Nic blinked. "Um... it's got a north and a south. I'm not sure what you mean."

"Mixed-- no, that was the wrong word." He crossed his arms, one hand coming up to brush across the front rim of his helmet plates in what had to be an absent gesture of frustration. "Is it constant? Perpetual."

"Fixed?" Nic guessed, and he nodded. "As far as us humans know, it hasn't ever changed. Why?"

"Some planets routinely shift their magnetic fields. I once scouted a planet that randomized its poles every five _breem._ It was very disconcerting." Again he indicated the mountains and setting sun. "But since it is stable here, I can use it to navigate, to some extent. We simply make our way through the roads until we find human habitation, and from there we can reorient ourselves."

Nic nodded. "Good plan. But-- I thought your sensors were damaged or something."

Whiplash favored her with the peculiar scrunching of faceplates that she had come to recognize as a smile. "Earth's magnetic field is very strong, and my body is made of metal. I can feel it even in recharge."

"So," Nic said, climbing atop a large boulder that sat at the side of the road, "other than our Decepticon problem, what do you think of Earth so far?"

Whiplash moved beside the boulder, carefully grazing a finger over the light dusting of lichen and moss that clung tenaciously to the stone. "Very... _full_." He looked up, her perch on the rock putting them eye-to-optic. "There is life everywhere here. No space is empty of it. Even the very _air_... I have never seen organic life thrive in such a way. There is so much that it would seem there is no room for anything else."

"There's room." Nic rested a hand on the sweeping curve of armor that made up a sort of combined collarbone and shoulder guard. "We make room."

He glanced down at her hand, the shutters around his optics clicking, and his face scrunched at her again. "You seem to do that a lot."

Nic withdrew her hand and shrugged. "Humans are kind of touchy-feely. Some of us are, anyway. If it bothers you..."

A heavy metal hand settled gently, briefly on her shoulder. "It does not." He turned back to regard the mountains. "I'm simply unaccustomed to it."

Nic bit her lip, weighing his statement in her mind. Just how long, she wondered, had he been alone? Considering his age it could be on the order of thousands of years. Nic felt she'd probably go batty after only a few days cut off from human contact... and to be constantly hunted on top of that, well, she'd be downright paranoid--

A stray nagging thought. _Oh boy._

Whiplash was still staring intensely out at the mountains as if they would part and reveal where this Optimus Prime was hiding. She kind of wished they would, too.

"Whip, I just had a thought about that last little run-in we had," she said. "Something about it doesn't sit right, now that I think about it."

He turned to look at her, head tilted curiously. "Sit... right?"

"I mean it felt a little off. Like it wasn't like when Rumble and Ravage came after us."

A rattling shrug. "They each have their own methods of attack," he said. "That one chose to toy with me."

"No, I mean... he was too nice about it."

That got her a look that was unmistakably _are you nuts?_ "He only waited too long to attack. We escaped before he could isolate us."

"Whiplash, he had us cornered a couple times. Even if he were under orders not to go robot when there's humans around, he could have just run us off the road and be done with it. You said yourself Decepticons don't give a damn about killing humans, so why be so careful?"

By the pause and the busy whirring of internal gears, she knew she had him there.

She went back to the memory of the gesticulating teenagers in the Camaro. "And the more I think about it... that girl that was in the passenger seat, I'm sure that was the girl who tried to ogle you at the truck stop, and she was definitely human."

Whiplash gave a sharp shake of his head. "It would take only a moment for that Decepticon to see you interact with her, then use her image to mislead you."

Okay, he had her there that time. But-- "You said he was asleep. In recharge or something."

"I don't know when precisely he came back online," he retorted peevishly.

"What if those were real kids in that car?" Nic replied. "Not projections."

"I cannot imagine any Decepticon would allow it."

"So what if that wasn't a Decepticon?"

She'd never literally heard someone's thoughts grind to a halt before.

But then he waved dismissively and paced a few steps away. "If that was an Autobot, he should have said something. He would have identified himself. He was certainly close enough, as you have pointed out."

"It's just a theory."

"Nic," Whiplash said, turning to face her, his tone tense, "they are called _those who deceive_ for good reason. Some of them are maddeningly cunning. The rest are just mad. I have been on the receiving end of their lies before. Lies that were so real to my processor I wanted to _die_ in them. No, the risk is too great. Both for the data I carry and for you."

With a sigh, Nic sat down on the rock. He made a good point, and even if she were right, what were they supposed to do about it? That yellow Camaro was long gone by now, and whatever Whiplash was doing to mask his presence likely hid him from friend and foe alike.

Idly, she flipped open her phone. One tiny signal bar finally lit up, and the screen informed her that there was a voice message waiting. "This data, your ship's logs," she said, deciding as she dialed that a subject change was in order, "what's in it?"

"I don't know." The agitation had left his voice, his reply a simple statement.

The phone's signal failed, the call to her voicemail dropped. She tried again. "You don't know? You haven't looked at it?"

"I have tried," he admitted, and she was surprised to hear a twinge of guilt coloring his tone. "But Rodimus must have asked Perceptor to encrypt it. The algorithms are unmistakable. Without the decryption key or a high enough clearance, it is unreadable." He paused thoughtfully. "You might be able to hack it, though."

Nic looked up at him, blinking. "Uh, what?"

"You developed a sophisticated manual glyph system to encode your personal data recordings. Are you not a skilled cryptologist?"

"Manual glyph sys-- Whip, I just have messy handwriting, that's nothing at all like--" She broke off when she realized he was chuckling. A close approximation of the human noise, at that, instead of the weird electronic warble. Nic crossed her arms. "Wiseass robot. That was at my expense, wasn't it?"

"Perhaps." Whiplash was nine and a half feet of mechanical innocence as he moved to stand beside the boulder again. "It begs the question as to why you desist on using a deliberately indecipherable system if your recordings aren't intended to be secret."

Dialing the phone again, she tried to hide a grin as she poked the little device against his armored hip. "Insist, not desist."

To her surprise, his reaction wasn't an annoyed muttered curse, but a massive flinch. Nic recoiled, startled, wondering if she'd poked at something she shouldn't have, and Whiplash suddenly reached down.

"Your communicator," he almost barked. "Let me see it."

Immediately, Nic put the cell phone in his open palm, whereupon his hand closed into a fist around the tiny-seeming device, holding but not crushing. Whiplash seemed to scowl down at his hand, and between his fingers Nic could see little arcs of electricity dance from his metal skin into the phone and back again.

After a moment, he did let out that swear word. "Cybertronian intrusion signal."

Nic shot to her feet, nearly falling off the boulder in the process. "_What!?_ Do you mean--"

"This is how they have been tracking us!" Whiplash let the phone drop, and with a sharp ring of singing metal, unsheathed a blade to skewer it before it could hit the ground.

"Oh, god, Whip--" Nic jumped down, horrified. "I didn't know, I swear!"

"You couldn't have." Grinding the shattered phone under one toe for good measure, he crouched, armor plates already shifting. "We must leave this place at once--"

And that was when the ground beneath them exploded.

Nic abruptly found herself sliding to a stop some ways down the hillside with no memory of having been thrown there, gravel and weeds scraping at her exposed face. Her riding leathers were no longer quite so brand-new, having done their job of protecting the rest of her body from just such a spill, and she pushed herself up slowly, sucking air back into her lungs.

Another explosion threw a spray of dirt and pebbles down the slope. Nic ducked, shielding her face, and pulled herself to her feet. The hum of charging weaponry filled the once-calm mountain air.

Nic scrambled back up the slope. "_Whiplash!_"

* * *

Lennox bit off a curse as the steering wheel spun of its own accord, jerking his hands away before they could be forcibly snapped off. "Hey-- a little warning, big guy, we talked about this--"

"Ironhide?" asked Epps, grabbing the door handle for support as the truck swerved down yet another country road.

"I'm picking up weapons fire. Cybertronian signature." The gravelly rumble of Ironhide's voice filled the cab. "Very close. I suggest you ready your guns."

* * *

Whiplash reversed the transformation sequence, picking himself up and bringing a cannon online. A snarl drew his attention up, where Ravage was perched atop the abandoned human construct.

He was actually starting to miss Rumble.

Ravage's jaws gaped wide, and the barrel of a concussion blaster extended from within. Whiplash dove to the side, and both robots opened fire at once. The exchange threw dirt and debris flying, and only when Ravage relented to let his preferred weapon recharge did Whiplash dare to look for Nic.

She appeared at the crest of the hill, across the road, looking a little scratched but largely unharmed. "Run," he ordered, determined to keep it that way, putting himself between Ravage and her.

He turned back around just in time to catch Ravage's swinging tail with his face. Whiplash flailed and fell backwards, more embarrassed than hurt-- if his sensors had been working properly, that blow would have never landed. His combat evasion protocols clamored for input that wasn't coming.

A heavy paw slammed down on his chestplates, one of the sickle-bladed talons slipping underneath and slicing into some sensitive wiring. Whiplash let out a snarl of his own, suggested to Ravage that he should develop a virulent rust, and lashed out with his blades. Ravage only clenched his talons tighter, curving blades digging deeper, and Whiplash jerked convulsively as something within him cracked and flashed painfully offline.

A primary transformation cog. _Transformation lock._

Horrorstruck, he swung a cannon up and fired, directly into Ravage's opening maw, right into the concussion blaster. As Ravage gnashed and reeled from the blast, he reached up and gave the barrel a savage yank, twisting it off its mountings with the satisfying crunch of shearing bolts and snapping wires.

The miniscule victory was short-lived. A coilgun lifted from Ravage's shoulder, swinging out to bear dead center on Whiplash's chest.

Before it could fire-- there was Nic. Hands wrapped around the barrel, one foot braced against Ravage's leg and pulling for all her worth. Amazingly, the gun wrenched aside as it fired, and the projectile buried itself in the earth only a handspan from his head.

For her disruption, Ravage's reprisal was as swift as it was uncaring. Lifting the foot that held Whiplash pinned, he swung, sending the human flying into the nearby trees.

Whiplash was out from underneath and on his feet before Ravage could return his attention to him. He vaulted up and over the Decepticon, giving the coilgun a vicious kick for good measure, and raced to where Nic had been flung.

He found her lying next to a tree, groaning. Fluid-- dark and red, how odd-- traveled from a gash on her forehead in a slow viscous smear down the side of her face as she lifted her head.

"I told you to run," he said, reaching down to her.

"And you thought I would?" she retorted. "Shit, Whip, your chest--"

Swinging a glare over his shoulder to Ravage, who had turned and was stalking towards them, Whiplash briefly touched the mangled and bent chestplate. "It is not serious," he half-lied. "I can still run."

So he gathered her up in his arms and did so, deeper into the trees and rock-strewn hills.

Here, his small size proved the advantage. He could maneuver the uneven ground with much greater ease than the larger Ravage, even use the trees and rocky outcroppings as shields against pulse blasts and more rounds from that brutal mass driver.

Ravage took down smaller trees in his path without a thought and grazed larger ones, sending splintered wood flying, thundering through the undergrowth after them. Whiplash pressed on, hoping that Nic's leak wasn't severe; he doubted humans had internal valve shutoffs, and she was so _small_, how much of her (lubricant? coolant? some sort of energon equivalent?) fluid could she lose before function loss occurred?

Suddenly he burst from the cover of the trees into a wide, open valley. At the other end of it, some distance away, a bit of paved road was visible, and Whiplash's wheels ground angrily against each other. Sensor-blind, transmission-deaf, and now unable to transform--! He would count it a great miracle if he managed to reach Prime in possession of all his limbs!

He didn't dare stop. He'd gained a bit of distance thanks to the terrain, but Ravage was coming-- noisily. Whiplash ran, legs fully extended, his stride at its longest over the gently sloping grassy land.

The high-pitched crackle and whine of an approaching missile (_missile!_ When had Ravage gotten _that?_) made him drop in order to evade, twisting as he did to land on his back with Nic still cradled carefully against his chest. The missile hit the ground nearby, spraying fire and dirt into the air. Whiplash curled protectively around his friend. Lifting one arm away from her, he fired repeatedly, forcing Ravage back into some evasive action of his own.

Nic rolled off him and stood, touching gingerly at her wound. It still seeped worryingly, the red stain reaching under her jawline and down her neck now.

"Are you all right?" they asked as one. Neither could answer as a projectile from the coilgun glanced over the top of his helmet plating with a sharp sting. Nic let out a yelp and ducked, covering her head.

"Maybe you can electrocute the bastard," she suggested as he got to his feet.

Continuing to fire to keep Ravage on the defensive, he knew what she was referring to-- the cables that hung suspended from tall wooden posts. They carried electrical energy, one of their main sources of power (Primus, didn't humans know how unstable and dangerous that stuff was? He could think of one incident in which Powerglide had stepped on a generator in a Nebulan colony-- the warrior had been able to do nothing but stare dumbly at his own hands for a solid orn). Such lines crossed this very valley; he had seen them when he had emerged from the trees. Several converged in the center, inside a wire-fenced enclosure of a bizarre array of large devices and constructs. Even at this distance, he could sense the faint tingle of powerful electrical current.

"He would never stand still long enough," he replied between shots, and muttered subvocal imprecations at how little damage he seemed to be doing to his enemy. He simply didn't have enough--

--power.

"Nic," he said. "Take cover. Please."

"Whiplash-- what're you-- hey!"

Running again, Whiplash made for the enclosure, where the hum of electricity was concentrated, and hastily he made some internal reconfigurations-- deactivating grounding shunts, overriding as much feedback as his naural network would allow, rerouting subprocessors to the right systems. As he vaulted the fence he hoped Ravage would keep his missiles to himself, if he had any left in his payload. One premature hit and this lunatic excuse of a plan would go straight to the Pit.

He turned and looked for Nic. For once, she had done as he asked, and was crouched at the tree line, and Ravage was ignoring her, stalking towards him. With a grim nod to himself, Whiplash brought his left cannon online, and unsheathed the single unbroken blade from his right arm. And with one quick thrust, he drove it into the nearest humming cylinder.

Raw electricity slammed into his systems. For one tiny fraction of a nanosecond, it felt excruciatingly _good_.

And then it was just _excruciating_.

His systems screamed warnings. Ignoring them, he forced the power to pool in his cannon, charging the weapon far past its original parameters. _It isn't enough._ _More._ Ravage was closer now. Whiplash felt an entire subset of relays blow and fought savagely to keep pulling the energy into his wracked and agonized systems. Converters balked. Heatsink sensors warned of impending failure. Ravage was very close.

Cannon primed. Sucking even more power, as much as possible for as long as possible. _Unbelievable pain._ Ravage tore away the link-wire fencing and snarled.

_Systems failure imminent. Spark powercore overload. Initiate stasis lock._

Now.

Whiplash fired. The blast erupted from his overheated cannon blue-hot and pure. It struck true.

And he fell, systems going dark one by one around him, until he was aware of nothing but the anguished vibration of his own spark, and then... nothing.

* * *

Half-hidden behind a tree, Nic couldn't breathe.

She could barely see; the light from Whiplash's cannon shot left bright dancing spots in her vision, and she barely registered the explosions and magnificent sprays of fire and sparks that followed.

When she could see through more than a squint, it was the sight of Ravage tumbling to a stop on the scorched grass that made her leap to her feet. Immediately she looked for her friend.

Whiplash stood in the power substation next to the blackened, smoking husk that had been a transformer. Before she could even call out to him, the robot shuddered, staggered, and dropped, clattering like some great metallic marionette with strings cut to the concrete slab.

Nic's blood ran cold and she grabbed the tree for support. "Get up," she whispered. "Get up. You have to get up."

He didn't. But neither did the wreck of black metal that was Ravage. The Decepticon suddenly thrashed, letting out a bone-thundering grinding sound, and Nic ducked back behind the tree. But no further sound came, save a low, drawn-out mechanical whine, which pitched to a stop.

Nic's heart pounded hotly in her ears as she got back to her feet and chanced a look back out. Ravage wasn't moving.

Neither was Whiplash.

And there was a pair of figures approaching the downed robots. _Oh shit. Oh shit. No, no, no--_

She was running before she knew it, screaming. "_GO AWAY! GET OUT OF HERE!_" The two men turned to look as she came at them. "_GET AWAY FROM HIM!_"

As she passed Ravage, aiming for the substation where Whiplash lay, one of the men moved to intercept her. She twisted, trying to evade, but he was too fast-- she found herself lifted off her feet from behind, two strong arms around her arms and middle. Someone was saying something to her, but she was past listening.

Nic exploded. Thrashing like a woman gone mad, she aimed her boot-clad heels backwards and struck her captor's shins. She couldn't make use of her elbows but she threw her head back, feeling her skull connect with a sharp crack and a cry of pain from behind. The arms abruptly released her, and she wasted no time making good her freedom.

She was almost to Whiplash when a large black truck came plowing over the grass from the other end of the little clearing. Her heart plummeted and she froze in place as it shook apart at the seams, unfolding and shifting, until a towering monolith of gleaming black robot glared down at her. Its arms flexed, and from each there sprouted a cannon, both of them bigger than her entire body.

It was too much. Her head swam, panic, injury and lack of food catching up to her. It was just too much. At the very end of her limits, the only thing she could do was pass out.

* * *

"Ironhide, _damn it--!_" Lennox's castigation died premature as suddenly the mechanoid swung both cannons skyward and fired continuously for a good three or four seconds, and instinctively the two human soldiers followed the trajectory.

There, far above in the darkening evening sky, the unmistakable knifelike silhouette of a UAV-- _what the hell?_ thought Lennox-- suddenly flashed, changed shape and spun about in the air, not quite avoiding Ironhide's fire. A wing was struck, and though it tilted crazily for a moment, the airborne robot did not fall, instead wheeling around and flying swiftly away.

"Laserbeak, you strutless coward!" Ironhide bellowed, firing a few more shots. "_Get down here and I'll tear you a new exhaust port!_"

"_Laserbeak_?" Lennox muttered incredulously. "Epps, get the girl. 'Hide, knock it off-- which one of these is the new guy?"

Grumbling, Ironhide ceased trying to bring down the entire sky and stomped over, keeping well clear of the power substation which was still smoking and spraying sparks. Squatting and retracting his cannons, he reached in, underneath the lines, and grabbed the leg of the blue robot. Slowly, the smallest robot Lennox had yet to see was dragged clear. "Hmmm. Stasis lock. He's badly damaged."

Epps came up, holding the unconscious redhead draped in his arms. His lip was bleeding where the girl had head-butted him, but he didn't seem to pay it much mind. "What about that thing--" He indicated the other inert robot with a jerk of his head-- "is it dead?"

Ironhide chuckled darkly, still hunched over the still form of the newcomer Autobot. "Amazingly, yes. Very impressive. Or stupid. I just contacted the others. Ratchet's incoming." He carefully gathered up the blue robot, who looked even smaller against Ironhide's bulk. "I can't wait to hear _this_ report."

Lennox relaxed, though somewhat uneasily, slinging his gun back over his shoulder. The girl, with a head wound and out cold, and the robot about as offline as they could get, apparently. Mission accomplished... he only hoped it wasn't for nothing.

* * *

_Author's Note: That noise I just heard was probably you all yelling "FINALLY!" at me, right?_

_Oh, and ::collapse:: Gaaah, why do I always feel exhausted after I finish a chapter? In all likelihood the next couple won't be as... intense... but I assure you-- it's just the calm before the storm._

_The chapter title, in case some of you are wondering: S.N.A.F.U. is an acronym thought to have originated in WW2 in the Army. It means "Situation Normal: All Fucked Up." Pretty much covers things here for our favorite space robots and their squishy friends, I think._

_And as always-- OMIGAWD, you guys are awesome for giving me enough reviews to choke a moose._

_Not that I go around choking innocent moosen. (Bonus cookies for those that get that joke.)_

_Author's Note, Part Deux: (Added after the fact in answer to some reviews and PMs I'm getting) About Whip's question regarding Earth's geomagnetic field. I know Nic's answer is technically wrong-- the planet's poles will switch, but the intervals are on such a large time scale that it's not a very common little factoid. I remember this nifty tidbit from my own science classes of days gone by, but that's because I'm a nerd who likes to hold onto such nerdly information for the sci-fi plotbunnies it may yield. Nic, however, is not a nerd and probably forgot the info as soon as final exams were done, so as far as she knows, the poles are fixed. I wrote from her standpoint, not mine._


	8. Convergence

New guy was the smallest robot Sam had seen, barring that psychopathic cuisinart he had later learned was called Frenzy. Now that they weren't playing freeway tag he was getting a good square look, and while new guy was still much bigger than him, the blue robot looked tiny next to the other Autobots.

And, lying motionless on the platform in an abandoned warehouse, he also looked kind of pathetic and woebegone, and rather like he'd been run over by a combine. The bright chrome and shimmering blue armor was dotted with scorch marks, deep scratches and dents. The arms looked the worst. The mouth of the cannon on the left arm was warped and fused at an unnatural angle, is if melted by a great heat. The long blade extended from the right was stained entirely black, as were the three fingers of the right hand.

About the only things that hadn't sustained any damage were his legs. During the chase in Denver, new guy had been moving so fast that Sam hadn't seen much beyond a flashing chrome-and-blue blur, and now he could see why: this guy was all leg. Only minimal armor on the thighs, and virtually none on the disproportionately long shin sections, each being composed mostly of three slightly bowed 'bones' that were segmented. Obviously specialized, Sam mused. A runner.

"Is he going to be okay?" Sam asked of Ratchet, who was hovering intently over new guy, bright lines of light sweeping over the still form.

The medic merely grunted and shook his head. "I hardly know where to begin. The electrical surge did the most damage. This," he said, indicating the small chestplate which looked as if it had been gnawed upon by... well, another robot, "is also new injury. But there's older damage too. Some of it very old. Frankly I'm surprised he was functional at all. Oh, I can repair him," he added, seeing the stricken look on Sam's face, "It just may take a bit longer than usual. I can bring him online soon enough. I'll need to get his processor up and running first, and that's the easy part. Rerouting around the blown relays won't take long. It's the rest of him that's an absolute slagging mess. I've found out why he hasn't responded to anyone, though. His communications array is completely inactive. I'm reading evidence of a disruptor blast of some sort. And his primary and secondary sensor nodes are almost entirely fused."

"So..." Sam ventured, hoping he was translating the technobabble correctly. "He's like, blind and deaf?"

"In a manner of speaking," Ratchet replied, sprouting some unidentifiable tool from within a hand. "His optics and audio receivers are fully operational, but beyond that, he would be unable to scan or transmit to anyone, or receive transmissions in turn."

"No wonder he ran from Bee." Sam sat down on the edge of the impromptu medical table and gave a half-laugh. "He was probably seeing Decepticons everywhere."

Ratchet removed the battered chestplate, poking even more tools down into the tangle of machinery within the small robot. "An apt assessment. Oh, _splendid_. Transformation cog's cracked. What _hasn't_ he broken?"

"His optics and audios?" Sam replied a little too helpfully, and Ratchet pinned him with one of his typically inscrutable glares. The boy promptly hopped to the concrete floor. "Y'know, I'm gonna go check on Mikaela and Bee now."

Bumblebee sat in car form at the other end of the warehouse, gone back into recharge to finish off what was left of the roughing-up Buzzsaw had given him. And Mikaela was curled up in the backseat, trying to put a dent in her sleep deficit. Sam almost wanted to get in and tilt the front seat back for a nap himself, but he was still too wound up. He wanted to be around when new guy woke up, if only to ask for a name so he could quit calling him _new guy_.

The chugging of an engine outside drew his attention. Ironhide pulled in through an open bay door, his truck bed full of more charred robot. Three soldiers who Sam recognized as men from Captain Lennox's team were perched around the bed, guns no doubt loaded with mini sabot rounds pointed down into the jumble, just in case. Ratchet had made it clear he wanted to examine the remains before it joined its fellows in the Laurentian Abyss, otherwise Sam was sure the thing would have already been on its way to that watery grave.

No sooner had the bay door been pulled down than Ironhide shuddered slightly, nearly tipping one of the soldiers out. Amidst startled exclamations from the soldiers, Lennox got out of the driver's side as Ironhide began to grumble. Ironhide grumbling sounded like every other mood the weapons specialist had. Of all the Autobots, Sam was finding him the hardest to 'read', and the constant fiddling with his beloved cannons wasn't helping. Sam was beginning to suspect Ironhide only had two modes: offline and _shoot things now yes?_

"Ratchet, get this misbegotten scrap heap off me," Ironhide was saying as the humans quickly gave him about ten feet of space to each side. "I'm getting _leaked_ on."

Ratchet didn't even look up from his busy tinkering in new guy's innards. "I'll look to the dead after I've made sure the living are going to stay that way," the medic snapped. "Put him in a corner somewhere."

"Sam," Lennox greeted, ignoring the robotic bickering that continued in the background, "Good to see you again."

"Captain, sir," Sam replied, feeling oddly at ease as Lennox clapped him on the shoulder as if he were one of his own men. "Hey, where's the biker chick? Wasn't she with new guy?"

"Prime took her and Epps to the hospital. She was a little banged up."

"By Ugly over there...?" Sam motioned vaguely over to where Ironhide had backed up to a corner and was transforming, unceremoniously dumping the dead mechanoid onto the concrete in a great metallic clamor.

Lennox shook his head. "Honestly, I don't know. We kinda got there at the end of the party. Both robots down, and there's this redhead come flying at us." The captain cocked half a grin. "When Epps gets back, be sure to ask him how he got beat up by a little girl."

Sam snorted. "She attacked you?"

"More like trying to get to blue boy and defend him from us. God only knows what those two have been through, but she wasn't going to let anybody touch him."

Sam let his eyes wander to Bumblebee and thought he knew exactly how the biker chick felt.

"And then," Lennox continued in a louder tone with a thin look at Ironhide, "certain robots who will remain nameless have to go show their full monty and the girl justifiably faints dead away."

Ironhide, for his part, rattled indignantly. "Lucky for all of you that I did, or Laserbeak might have taken a notion to gun you and the girl down. _I'm_ just glad he's easy to bully."

"'Laserbeak'?" Sam asked.

"Laserbeak," said Lennox with a face too straight.

"What's going on?" murmured a voice from behind. Turning, Sam spotted Mikaela poking her head out Bumblebee's open passenger-side window, craning her neck to peer at Ironhide.

Sam went over and leaned against Bumblebee. "Ratchet's still working on new guy and Ironhide just brought in dead guy. Noise wake you up?"

"Didn't really sleep," Mikaela shrugged, opening the door and crawling out from the backseat. "Hi, Captain."

Whatever Lennox had to say was cut off by a sudden commotion. Shouting in the oddly musical staccato of Cybertronian echoed through the mostly-empty warehouse. From their position, Sam and Mikaela could see Ratchet's back, the medic's bulk concealing something thrashing wildly on the improvised exam table.

"He's online," Ironhide commented mildly as Bumblebee transformed behind the two teens. Sam exchanged an eager grin with Mikaela, and within moments everyone present was crowding around the platform.

"Back up, all of you," Ratchet ordered as gruffly as possible, the effect ruined somewhat by the three-toed metal foot that had planted itself square in his face. Lennox directed his team away, but no one else moved as new guy grappled somewhat ineffectually at the hand that was holding him down. Ratchet pried the foot off and spoke to the newcomer in Cybertronian.

New guy stopped struggling. Said something.

Ratchet exchanged a three-way glance with Ironhide and Bumblebee, the latter of whom only shrugged and emitted a low warble.

Ratchet pulled his hand away from new guy and spoke again. New guy pushed himself into a half-sitting position, fused cannon scraping clumsily on the table, and replied.

Another curious three-way look between the bigger robots.

Sam levered his elbows up onto the platform and propped his chin on his arms. "What's going on?"

New guy looked right at him, the shutters around his optics working furiously. Sam fought back the urge to grin; he'd never seen any of the robots look quite so flustered before. The smooth curve of new guy's noseless face suddenly lengthened slightly, knob of a chin descending as the nose-area's plates slid apart and briefly exposed vents.

If new guy made one crack about pheromones...

But new guy only paused, looking further behind Sam to where Bumblebee stood. This time Sam didn't bother to hide his grin, glancing back at his guardian as the yellow robot waved cheerily.

"Bumblebee," Ratchet informed new guy. "_Autobot_ Bumblebee, I might add, and that was a fine chase you led us on."

New guy went from flustered to embarrassed, cringing in on himself and speaking more in Cybertronian. This time, though, Ironhide snorted. "I understood _that_," the black robot said.

"What in the Pit is wrong with your lingual subroutines?" Ratchet muttered, grabbing new guy's head in one hand and popping tools out of the other.

"Medic--" New guy's long legs kicked momentarily as he was tipped off-balance. "--stop--_ get pan gate, lie reed who mind _Nic--"

Sam blinked. That was English, but... "Huh?"

"Sit _still_--" Ratchet fumbled with his patient, trying to bring his tools to bear on the back of the newcomer's head.

New guy started to reach up with his fused cannon-arm, a discordant clacking sounding as he apparently tried to retract the weapon and nothing happened.

"Stop that, you're stripping the gears."

The other arm came up, the burnt blade sliding back into his arm with an equally reluctant-sounding grind. "Where is she?" he demanded, pushing Ratchet's tool-hand away and squirming out of the other's grip. "Let me go. Ravage will kill her!"

Mikaela, slipping up beside Sam, muffled a giggle as a weird sort of lopsided wrestling match broke out, with new guy trying unsuccessfully to worm out from underneath Ratchet's larger and stronger hands.

"And where do you think you're going?" Ironhide cut in. "Half shut-down and can't speak straight. What a sight."

"Is she here?" New guy stopped fighting Ratchet's hands long enough to glance around.

"If you mean the biker chick," Sam said, "then no, she's--"

"Then I must find her." An attempt to stand was thwarted, and new guy scowled up at Ratchet. "Ravage is going to--"

"Ravage is going to sit over there and rust like a good little pile of scrap," Ironhide interrupted, pointing to where the dead robot was heaped.

"You... you killed him?" Again new guy paused.

"No," Ironhide grunted. "You did."

New guy was flabbergasted, if Sam was reading the expression right.

"As _marvelous_ as that is," Ratchet growled, "if you don't sit still I will offline you again and we'll just wait for your report until _after_ I've welded you to the wall. As for your friend, she's going to be all right. Her damage was very minor. Yours, on the other hand, is so spectacular I really shouldn't have brought you out of stasis lock so soon."

"Optimus Prime is making sure she's getting help," Sam added, hoping the name-dropping would calm the little robot down.

It did. New guy relaxed, metal settling with a raspy clatter as he shifted on the table. "So Prime is here." His voice, a vaguely androgynous tenor, dropped noticeably, as if he couldn't quite believe it was real.

"Not far from here. He will bring your friend once she's ready. I have him on an open comm," Ratchet said, considerably more gentle in tone. "Make your report while I make your repairs. He'll hear it."

For a moment, all the small robot did was sink where he sat. Sam had the feeling that if it had been at all possible, new guy would be crying with relief.

"I am Autobot Whiplash," he said at last, "Reconnaissance, infiltration, secure dispatch. Exploration vessel _Axalon 7_, under the command of Rodimus, with Perceptor, Powerglide and Bluestreak." A pause. "I am the only survivor."

The three-way glance between Ratchet, Ironhide and Bumblebee was considerably weightier this time.

"I carry an encrypted copy of the _Axalon_'s logs on Rodimus's final order. I would have transmitted my acknowledgement of Prime's call, but I was attacked almost immediately..."

* * *

"Miss Darling? Nicole, can you hear me? Come on now, that's it..." 

Groggily Nic growled at whatever jerk thought it was funny to shine a flashlight right into her eyes, trying to bat away the unfamiliar hands that touched her. Blurry impressions filtered into her mind. Fluorescent lights. A soft, flat surface underneath. A thin, sour antiseptic smell.

"There we go. Nicole?"

The face of a woman hovered too near over her, pen light waving in Nic's face like some migraine-inducing lightning bug. Nic squinted, reached up to push the woman out of her personal space. "Stoppit," she murmured irritably.

"Well, that's something." The woman withdrew the pen light and was prodding at Nic's face. "Pupils look normal. Lisa, get ahold of Dr. Patil and schedule an x-ray while I take care of this cut."

"What?" Nic tried to clear her head and started to sit up. "What's going on?"

"Take it easy, honey," the woman replied, gently pushing her back down on the bed. "You don't seem to have a concussion or any broken bones, but let's not press our luck, mm?"

Bed. Woman wearing a white coat with an ID tag dangling from a lanyard. Busy noises all around from beyond a white curtain hanging from a track in the ceiling. Hospital? "Where am I?"

"The emergency room. I'm Dr. Mitchell. This is St. Vincent Hospital." Nic winced as the doctor dabbed something cold and wet and stinging against the cut on the side of her forehead. "Can you tell me what happened, Nicole?"

Memory came back in a rush and Nic sucked in a breath. "_Whiplash!_" The name was out of her mouth before she could stop it, and she shot into a sitting position.

"So..." Dr. Mitchell regarded her with a raised brow, cotton swab still in hand. "automobile accident? Your neck hurts?"

"What? No, no." The mental image of a lanky blue body clattering lifeless to the ground made her stomach lurch. "I need to-- my bike-- how'd I get here?"

Dr. Mitchell merely resumed cleaning the cut. "Motorcycle? Don't tell me you were riding around without a helmet."

"No," Nic tried not to snap. "Look, I have to get out of here. Can I go? My-- I need to find my friend, he'll be worried--"

"Oh, he's here. He brought you in."

"What?" Nic tried to picture the scenario of a giant robot carting her into an emergency room and couldn't imagine it would end this calmly.

"The soldier gentleman? He's in the waiting room, as far as I know." Dr. Mitchell reached for a paper-wrapped gauze pad on the nearby tray.

"I don't know any..."_Oh, shit. Those guys. Who are probably playing Alien Autopsy with Whip right now._ "I have to go."

"Whoa, whoa, you just cool your jets, missy," Dr. Mitchell clamped a hand on her shoulder and Nic winced as a bruise made itself known, followed by a chorus of aches and scrapes seemingly all over her body.

"See? You look like you fell off a mountain. Sit still."

Nic was about to protest again-- she would get up and march right out, bruises bedamned-- when the curtain parted and a fatigue-clad man leaned in and, spotting Nic, grinned, though the expression was marred by a slightly swollen and split lip. "Hey, you're up."

Dr. Mitchell looked at Nic. "Your friend, right?"

"I don't know that guy." Nic stabbed a finger at him, giving the doctor her best suspicious glare.

"Sir, you need to leave," Dr. Mitchell told the soldier.

"I just need to tell her--"

The doctor put one hand to her hip. "_Sir_--"

"It's about your bike, Nicole." The man gave Nic an unmistakable Look, eyebrows raised and all but winking as Dr. Mitchell made as if to physically push him out.

Nic held up a hand to the doctor, narrowed her eyes pointedly at the man. "My bike."

The grin turned rather smug. "Yes, ma'am, the blue one. It was kinda busted up but we got it to a mechanic."

"A mechanic," Nic repeated flatly.

"Best one in the universe," the soldier said, smug tipping into smarmy. "You might say the man's a machine when it comes to fixing them."

Nic stared.

"You, out, now." Dr. Mitchell did shove the soldier this time, and he backed out.

"I'll be out front if you want a lift to the garage," came his voice from beyond the curtain. "So just let the doc check you out, your bike's gonna be good as new--"

"Soldier, your camouflage isn't working," Dr. Mitchell barked, half-out of the curtain. "I can still see you."

Nic drew in an uncertain breath, barely noticing as the doctor continued bandaging her forehead cut._ He knows,_ she thought._ He knows about the robots. But can I trust him? Did the good guys find us?_

Half of Nic's mind was telling her to get off the bed, storm out of the hospital and start hunting down her friend, because surely he was in pieces or worse, not that she would have any idea how to help him.

But when the doctor asked her to remove her shirt to examine for further injury, she complied, and hoped that the x-ray wouldn't take too long.

It didn't; the hospital apparently wasn't terribly busy at the moment, and while the pictures were developing, Nic took stock. Her jacket, the nice scuffed-but-still-wearable black and white leather, was on a chair near the bed where she'd been parked, but her backpack was missing, as was her helmet. The helmet was easy to place-- it had been left at that abandoned building just before-- was it robot fracas number_ three_ she'd thrown herself into? And her backpack, well, she was certain it had been on her back when she'd fainted like a lady out there. Soldier boy probably had it, she reasoned. It had her wallet in it. Otherwise how would he and the doctor have known her name?

At length the x-rays came back, no broken bones to report, though Dr. Mitchell clucked over the myriad bruises that were trying to outnumber her freckles, one odd bruise on her ribs looked rather like a large _hand_, but that was just silly, right? Nic had to smile a little ruefully; gentle though Whiplash tried to be with her, he didn't exactly have any padding. She could bear a little scuffing if he was okay.

It was an 'if' she was going determine, hell or high water, the very instant Dr. Mitchell turned her loose.

Pausing only to don her jacket, and to eyeball a vending machine and tuck hands briefly into pockets woefully empty of change or paper money, Nic found the emergency room waiting area. Of the dozen worn padded chairs, only two were occupied: one by a slightly dirty backpack, the other a muscular man in camouflage uniform with a cell phone to his ear.

Nic marched right up to him and folded her arms across her chest. "You'd better not be shitting me."

With one brow raised, he merely looked at her with half a grin and spoke into the phone. "Yeah, that was her. We'll be there soon."

Her knee-jerk response, thankfully quashed, was something along the lines of _oh, 'we' will, will 'we'?_ "Let's be sure we're talking about the same thing before I go anywhere with you."

"Fair enough," he said, slipping the phone into a pocket. "I'm getting the story secondhand, but the gist of it is you tooling out from Kansas on a four-wheel drive like I ain't never seen... got some real unusual extras, your bike, don't he?"

Nic threw a look over her shoulder at the reception desk on the other side of the room. The nurse on duty wasn't paying them any attention, but she lowered her voice all the same. "So you know about the space robots-- what else you got?"

"There was something about you throwing rocks at some mofo called Rumble." He shrugged nonchalantly. "But I think my favorite part is you playing tag with the tornado."

"Chicken," Nic corrected. "Not tag. And not my idea, either."

"So whose was it to jump the overpass?"

"That one was mine."

He laughed and stood up. "_Damn_, girl." He held out a hand. "Robert Epps. Call me Bobby."

She relaxed a bit, and shook his hand perhaps a little too guardedly, but suspicions were hard to kill; this guy was military, and military meant government, and she didn't know what government would mean for Whiplash. "Nic. It's only Nicole if I'm in trouble." She gave him a look. "And what kind of trouble am I in, exactly?"

Bobby looked as if he wanted very badly to roll his eyes as he picked up her backpack and handed it to her. "Only the kind everybody in our little club gets in. Look, I'll take you to where he's being fixed. My captain says he asked for you before he'd let the medic touch him."

Nic slung her backpack over one shoulder, trying not to wince as her patchwork of bruises protested. "'Man's a machine', huh?"

"Best I could think of on short notice." He preceded her out the automatic doors. The parking lot beyond was dimly lit-- vaguely Nic wondered just how long she'd been out if it was completely dark out already. She tried to peer out past the lot, looking down towards the street. There were some buildings that she could make out, but there wasn't a single light to be seen beyond the hospital's lot lamps.

"Power's knocked out," Bobby said, seeing her look. "Seems someone stuck their finger in a power substation not too far from here. Thank god the hospital's got decent generators."

Nic cringed. "I can't believe he did that. Is he going to be okay?"

"I don't know," said the soldier, and the I'm-a-smug-bastard tone was back, "Why don't you ask him?"

Nic followed his pointing finger to where, idling under the yellowed glow of a lot lamp near the road, there was parked a massive blue eighteen-wheeler, painted with red flames washing back from the prow. _Ask the trucker?_ she thought.

And then she remembered just what sort of crazy alternate dimension she currently occupied.

The semi's lights flickered on. The engine's idle keyed up just slightly, as if acknowledging them with a polite nod. Nic stopped cold.

"Easy now." Bobby put a hand on her shoulder. "We've had enough of you running from the good guys."

"Oh my god," she breathed, mouth agog, staring at the truck. No, Truck, with a capital T, a continent on wheels. She was approaching it without really telling her legs to move, boggling at the sheer size. She had seen big trucks before. Rigs like this were ubiquitous just about anywhere. But Bobby had all but come out and said this was a giant robot, and--

Perched on the hood, gleaming, an embossed sigil identical to the one Whiplash bore.

Automatically she tried to imagine it transformed and standing and her brain broke. _Holy shit, he must be huge!_

The door swung smoothly open of its own accord.

Nic hesitated only a moment-- sitting on Whiplash was one thing, rather like getting a piggyback ride if one looked at it sideways while squinting-- but to actually be _inside_ one of them? It seemed invasive to her, but the door was open, an invitation... Very, very carefully, she pulled herself up, climbing delicately into the passenger seat. Once she was in, the door gently shut.

It looked normal. Extraordinarily clean for a truck's interior, but normal. Nic settled her backpack in her lap, wrapping her arms around it and trying to make herself as unobtrusive as possible. Could he feel her, sitting there?

"Um, hi?"

"Greetings, Nicole Darling." It was a voice she could feel in the fillings of her teeth, rich and strong, a clear bass filling the cabin. "I am relieved to see you are not badly injured after your ordeal. My name is Optimus Prime."

An utterly girlish squeak erupted from her before she could stop it. "_ohmygod_-- we've been looking for you!"

"I know," came the reply, and she could _hear_ the gentle smile in the voice. "I only wish the reunion had been less... eventful. But we are glad nonetheless for the safe return of one of our own."

Nic hugged her backpack, unsure of where to look-- the voice was coming from everywhere-- as Bobby climbed up into the cab and into the driver's seat. "Is... is he okay? I mean, Whiplash, is he going to be okay?"

"He will be, because of you. Whiplash has given a full accounting of your actions since his arrival on this planet. It is due in no small part to your courage that he has made it this far."

Nic felt her face and ears grow hot, and she was glad it was only dimly lit inside the cabin, because she was sure she was turning bright red. "I just-- just did what I had to, I mean..." she trailed off, suddenly fumbling for words, fighting the full-head blush. Bashful and timorous were unfamiliar sensations.

Bobby leaned over, across the gap between the two front seats. "Pay no attention to the robot behind the curtain."

That did it. The blush evaporated and she threw him a narrow look, or tried to, marred by the grin that was crawling across her face. "My ruby slippers have steel toes, pal."

The soldier let out a laugh, retreating back to the driver's side, hands up in mock surrender. "Oh, I think you're going to fit _right_ in."

"Indeed," Optimus's voice sounded again. "I will now take you both back to our temporary shelter, where the rest of my unit is waiting, Nicole Darling, and your friend is most anxious to see you."

* * *

Given that this was Prime's contingent, Whiplash had been fully expecting a lecture on protocol for revealing himself to a native when stealth procedures were obviously in action. As protocol breaches went, that one was one of the worst-- not even the rowdiest and most rebellious Cybertronian soldier would break it lightly. But given that there were currently seven humans in full view of them in standard mode, one more wasn't likely to be a problem. He hoped. 

No, the lecture was, instead, an angry inventory of his own damage.

"Hairline stress fractures in the upper frame... misaligned struts... slipped gears... and _this_ will take forever to refit," Ratchet groused, disengaging Whiplash's left arm at the shoulder servo. "Almost every component's been flash-welded together and the cyclotron's casing is completely shattered. What possessed you to overcharge like that? You'll be lucky if this weapon isn't a total loss."

"I lack sufficient power to overcome an enemy of Ravage's size on my own," Whiplash replied, doing his utmost not to sound insubordinate, "and the electrical energy was available. I saw few other options."

"I thought it was pretty creative," said a human voice behind him, and Whiplash twisted to look. He hadn't heard the female climb upon the rough repair berth and his sensors were even duller than before, thanks to the surge.

"Primus save me from_ creative_ soldiers," Ratchet retorted, cutting laser already at work. "and their _creative_ injuries. And I told everyone to let me work, Mikaela."

"You've got his arm off," the human pointed out. "Why can't he come talk with everybody while you're working on that? He can walk, can't he?"

"I will not leave the facility," Whiplash added, and paused as both the medic and Mikaela stared at him. He cycled his vents. "What did I say?"

"That you weren't going to _heave_ the facility," the human said, mouth quirking upwards.

Whiplash turned back to the medic. "The data I acquired for this language is corrupt. Can someone give me a corrected download? This is embarrassing."

"I'm afraid it's more serious than that." Ratchet looked up from the detached arm, retracting his laser. "You're doing it in Cybertronian too. Only worse. When I brought you online it was nothing but nonsense."

Whiplash's fuel pump valves fluttered in consternation. Very carefully, he employed Cybertronian to ask, _("You cannot understand me?")_

_("That was mostly coherent,")_ Ratchet replied in kind, then switched back to English. "I'll know more when I can do a deeper scan of your processor itself. But I'd like to get all your hardware in working order before I go poking around in your cerebral architecture."

"If it's any consolation," said Mikaela, putting a hand on his remaining arm in a startling similarity to Nic, "you speak better English than most native speakers."

He offered a weak smile. "Thank you. Nic has been very patient with my malfunction, but I will be glad to have it gone."

Ratchet returned his attention to the wreck of the arm. "We will see."

Whiplash did not at all like the discouraging undertone in the medic's subvocals.

"Go on," Ratchet added. "Your arm doesn't need to be attached for this and Optimus is on his way with the human female."

Whiplash knew a dismissal when he heard one and levered his legs off the berth to stand on the floor. He turned to assist Mikaela, but another human had materialized at his side, a male reaching up to help the female down. Whiplash was half tempted to ask that Ratchet restore his sensors first-- he was a little tired of being snuck up on.

"You are Samwitwicky, correct?"

"Just Sam, actually." The male grinned up at him, leading the way to where the other two Cybertronians and five humans were gathered. "So did you and the biker chick practice for that overpass jump or what? That was_ wicked_."

Troubled, Whiplash drew back. "Wicked? It was not my intent to be willfully malicious-- I was unaware of who..."

"He means it was cool," Mikaela interrupted, but her clarification only confused him further. How_ evil_ was synonymous to _low temperature_ was quite beyond him.

_("Both words indicate a positive response in this context,")_ a new voice, in the welcome sounds of Cybertronian, cut in. (_"Human vernacular. Really something, isn't it?")_

Whiplash looked up at the gleaming yellow figure of Bumblebee. The joy he felt from at last being in the presence of others of his own kind was tempered with a healthy dose of mortification that, brilliant though his escape had been, it had been from an Autobot, and _this_ Autobot at that, the hero of Tyger Pax. (He was only glad that his language malfunction meant-- hopefully-- that Bumblebee hadn't understood the rather colorful suggestion he had shouted during the chase in Denver.)

"Bumblebee," Ratchet, not even moving from the task of repairing Whiplash's arm, growled. "You've put enough strain on that vocalizer. Not so much as a beep out of you for at least a day."

Bumblebee let out an affirmative beep. A little thrown by the casual insolence, Whiplash cast a glance back at the medic, then to the larger black-armored warrior who stood near the cluster of humans, expecting a reprimand of some sort. Nothing happened, save a smatter of giggling from Sam and Mikaela, and the murmur of human conversation.

"So," said the black-armored one. "This is what became of Rodimus's rookie. No wonder you were so slippery. There are still stories about that incident at Maccadam's..."

Well, the night was shaping into one great leak of embarrassment, Whiplash thought, and spoke up before the warrior could continue-- bad enough he stood here before their human allies stripped of nearly half his parts, he would weld what was left of his dignity to his bare spark chamber if he had to. "I recognize your voice now. Ironhide-- I first met you outside Assembly Complex Vector Sigma, in Kalis."

"Hmm, that was you, wasn't it?" Ironhide shifted, peering closely at him over the heads of the humans. "It certainly took you long enough to pick a designation." He laughed, and gave Whiplash a companionable thump across the helmet, a blow that didn't hurt but nonetheless sent him stumbling into Bumblebee.

"Hey, 'Hide, take it easy," commented one of the uniformly-clad male humans. "Poor guy's been dented enough."

"A shame about Rodimus," Ironhide continued as Bumblebee steadied Whiplash. "What happened out there?"

Whiplash collected himself. Giving a report was something he could do, even given the content of this particular report. He had known for a very long time that, if he survived, eventually he would have to give official notice of the deaths of the four soldiers who had become his closest friends and mentors.

"I was on recon when the attack occurred," he said, easily falling into what Powerglide had half-jokingly called his 'report mode', speaking crisply and calmly. "When I returned--"

A blast of noise from outside mercifully cut the ill-fated tale short.

* * *

According to Bobby, the building had once been a storage facility and bottling plant for some local beverage company that had gone out of business some years back, and the building had lain fallow since, empty and unused on the deserted outskirts of Leadville, Colorado. Perfect for the temporary appropriation by semi-itinerant space refugees in need of some shelter. 

Optimus pulled up to the closed bay door with a hiss of air brakes and a blare of his horn, startling Nic. Presently the door was rolled up and open by a pair of men in uniform, Bobby's fellow soldiers, she surmised, who stood aside to let the eighteen-wheeler roll inside. She peered through the windshield, catching only a glimpse of great metallic shapes under the glow of incandescent lights high above before the doors opened and Bobby hopped out.

"Might want to give him some space," he told her, and vanished with a grin.

Nic shouldered her pack and clambered out as carefully as she'd gotten in, backing away as soon as she hit the concrete floor. She started walking around the front of the truck, intending to seek Whiplash out, but as she passed the front grille, _that sound_ stopped her in her tracks.

Hissing, rattling, whirring-- the flame-patterned truck erupted right before her eyes, shifting and unfolding, the familiar truck shape boiling over, growing into something more. Feet like pillars braced legs as massive as trees as the radiant robot stood up, metal sliding and ringing in the hollow space of the warehouse. And, as plates slid back revealing a face that was probably taller than she was, Optimus Prime gestured with one arm.

"Nicole Darling, these are our comrades and allies," he said.

Well aware her eyeballs were going to pop out and roll away, Nic let out the breath she'd been holding and turned around. Three robots immediately caught her eye-- the big black hulk, a smaller bright yellow one with car doors splayed like wings from his back, and--

"_Whiplash!_" Her hands flew up to her mouth at the state he was in, and she ran towards him. Worse, if that was possible, than the last time she'd seen him. An entire arm was _gone_, as was half his upper chestplate, exposing the tangle of his clockwork guts. His beautiful blue and chrome finish was scratched, dented and scraped bare in places. "Oh my god, your arm!"

"Nic," he greeted her, coming forward to meet her halfway. "The medic has it-- I am being repaired, it's all right."

"It's just-- _geez._"

"Look." Barely contained amusement plain in his voice, Whiplash knelt and pointed back with his remaining hand towards the yellow robot. "You were right."

"My scout, Bumblebee," Optimus said. "Whom you nearly met in Denver."

The yellow robot held up hands with fingers curled into mocking claws. A tinny sound played as if through a car stereo: "Grr. Arg."

Nic's hands came back up to her face as another blush threatened. "Oh, god," she chuckled. "If we had just pulled over..."

"What's done is done," interjected Optimus gently. "And my weapons specialist, Ironhide, who found you both after your encounter with the Decepticon Ravage."

"Brave enough to throw rocks at Decepticons," the black behemoth rumbled affably, "and the sight of me puts you offline?"

"Couldn't find any rocks," she retorted before she could stop her mouth. Ironhide only laughed appreciatively, over the smattering of chuckles from the knot of humans.

Optimus continued. "My chief medical officer, Ratchet--"

"Who is busy," cut in a chartreuse-hued robot some distance away, his back to the gathering, puttering at something on a platform made of plywood, sheet metal and stacks of concrete blocks.

"Sam Witwicky and Mikaela Banes, and Captain William Lennox and his team, all of whom greatly aided us in the battle against the Decepticon forces." Optimus inclined his head down to Whiplash and Nic. "You have our gratitude, Nicole, for your part in Whiplash's safe return. And welcome, Whiplash, to Earth."

Whiplash stood, drawing himself to his full height with as much aplomb as his current state of disrepair would allow. "Autobot Whiplash reporting for duty, Optimus Prime."

* * *

_Author's Note: This chapter is over and done like the pile of filler it is. But even pie needs filler, right? Mmm, pie._

_Anyway, this took so long because absolutely nothing happened. No explosions or chases or fights. I hardly knew what to do with myself. Sheeyikes. Well, here it is._

_And yet again, you guys astound me with the amount of kind words I'm getting. I've never had such a response. You guys are awesome._


	9. Fork in the Road

"He took it better than I expected."

Optimus turned, away from observing where the humans sat, clustered around an assortment of quickly-prepared consumable substances-- fast food, they called it, in their charmingly succinct way-- talking with the newcomer. Sam was gesticulating wildly, likely describing the events of Mission City, with the human soldiers punctuating the conversation every so often. Ratchet had just finished putting Whiplash offline for some of the more extensive repair work, and Optimus had sent an electronic communiqué to Defense Secretary Keller detailing the rescue.

Optimus recognized Whiplash from the reports made by Rodimus before the exodus. The younger commander had described the raw recruit as an excellent soldier-- but little else. In Rodimus's own words, _'he'll follow orders and he thinks quickly in a fight-- sometimes too quickly. The way he slags off the 'Cons would be funny if it weren't so dangerous. But beyond that, he has the personality of a lugnut. Protocol is all that matters to him.' _ Drawn too soon from the protection of the assembly crèche, where the newly-sparked would normally spend at least a stellar cycle learning, shaping personality matrices, forming ties with one's crèche-brothers, and usually choosing a name before coming to the surface, Whiplash had let the war define him.

Obviously, time had had its inexorable effect and Whiplash had relaxed his stranglehold on protocol, or else he never would have dared initiate contact with a human. And because of that, while the little runner had been understandably shocked to learn of what had befallen Megatron and the Allspark, he was less surprised to learn that a human was how it had come about. Whiplash was no stranger to the force of human valor.

"I imagine it's a conversation we'll have many times over as more Autobots arrive," Optimus said. "But I imagine many won't be as..."

"Accepting?" Ratchet filled in, hands buried knuckle-deep in Whiplash's components. "Honestly, I think it hasn't processed yet. Primus, I was there and I'm still trying to get used to the idea that Cybertron is going to stay dead."

It was a flat statement of fact, with no hint of accusation or resentment. Optimus tried, and failed, not to read too deeply into it; Ratchet was thus far the only one of his team yet to express an opinion one way or the other regarding Earth as a new homeworld. But this wasn't the time to engage his medic in a discussion of personal opinion.

"Whiplash is a child of the war," the leader said. "Uncertainty and conflict has dominated his existence from the very beginning. I think it is the concept of peace he may have difficulty getting used to."

Ratchet grunted. "He needn't worry. We'll have uncertainty and conflict aplenty, and soon, I'd wager. Ravage's bond node was recently active."

"How recent?"

"Hours ago, at least."

Optimus rumbled quietly, unhappily. Ratchet paused and favored him with a sidelong glance.

"You had no way of knowing any of them would be this close this soon," the medic said, and activated a regenerative laser. "The concept of peace may have to wait a while yet."

"We may not have the luxury of calling down the _Ark_ before we have to confront him. Will our current measures be sufficient?"

"After all this time, I don't doubt he's created newer and more heinous code to throw around. I'm already working on new firewalls, but I can't promise they'll be effective." Again Ratchet paused, optics cast ruefully down at the small blue form before him. "Whiplash may be of some help in that regard, much as I wish he wasn't."

"Ratchet?"

"Processor scan showed traces of intrusion. Multiple times, over a long period."

Optimus clenched a fist. And what horrors, he wondered, had been forced upon this unlucky spark?

"He fought back, of course, and that data is going to be very useful in constructing the programs. Unfortunately the damage to his processor's been done." Ratchet shook his head, resuming work. "I believe that's the source of his language difficulties. That, and spending over ninety vorn adrift alone, not communicating with anyone even once."

"Can you correct the fault?"

A hint of Ratchet's eternal longsuffering ire resurfaced. "Oh, certainly-- all it would take would be a complete interprocessor resequencing, and perhaps the aid of Primus himself to prevent an accidental total core wipe or cognitive function cascade failure. The faults are so seamlessly ingrained in his code that I'd never be able to isolate them without doing more damage.

"In my professional opinion, I don't think it'll do any harm to just leave it be. There's nothing wrong with his lingual comprehension; it's his execution that misfires. Perhaps the problem may correct itself with re-exposure to the use of communication... given time." Ratchet fell back to Cybertronian in a mutter. _("One patient who wants to speak but shouldn't, and another who should speak more and may shut up out of discomfiture. Truly, I am the envy of physicians the galaxy over.")_

Optimus indulged in a human gesture he'd seen employed often by Mikaela: his optics turned momentarily upward. Any pat phrase resembling "do all you can for him" would be met with more caustic barbs, because why would the medic do less? So Optimus merely gripped Ratchet's shoulder once and turned away.

"I will leave him in your enviable hands, then, while I finish decrypting these logs he was carrying." He paused. "If there is anything concerning Perceptor, I will let you know."

Ratchet didn't look up. "Thank you, sir."

With a sigh of vents, Optimus strode away. They had all been separated from friends, colleagues, and brothers, and not once had Optimus's crew crossed paths with other Autobots in all the time in space. The vastness and uncertainty had taken its toll on them all. It stood to reason-- against all hope, which was reason's natural foe-- that the time had exacted its final price on a great many of their kind.

Still, it was one thing to merely assume a friend had perished, and quite another to have the truth of it. However sharply Ratchet felt Perceptor's loss, Optimus grieved equally for Rodimus.

Young by their standards, turned so swiftly from being reckless, careless and carefree, to being one of the best battlefield commanders early in the war, soon promoted to the circle of lieutenants that reported directly to Prime. Such a dramatic change in maturity and character had, while meriting a designation change, been to Rodimus's credit-- and detriment, for the innocence lost. Optimus had taken it upon himself to personally mentor the young commander.

And now, he was seventy-five hundred years gone. _Who war does not kill, it leaves damaged._

Optimus settled into vehicle mode near the recharging Ironhide and powered down to concentrate on unraveling the last protective code around the bundle of data Whiplash had risked his life for. The encryption had been so tight it bordered on absurd. Clearly Rodimus had intended it to be impossible to break in the event Whiplash was captured. Only the fact that it was Autobot code, and the clearance that came with the rank of Prime, made relatively short work of revealing the logs themselves.

At first it was fairly straightforward. Star charts, navigational data, ship systems status reports. Nothing unusual, save that the course of the _Axalon 7_ had at first been seemingly random and haphazard, then an almost straight shot away, as if fleeing a persistent enemy. It fit with Whiplash's report, at least.

Mildly interesting, but hardly worth the measures taken. Optimus went deeper, unspooling the data with great care, until he came to a vocal recording, marked high priority.

He was unprepared for how weary Rodimus sounded. And as he listened, examining the files embedded beneath, a knot of anger and dread began to build.

* * *

Somehow-- and Nic suspected one of the robots was responsible-- there was running hot (oh, bless!) water in the showers tucked in one end of the abandoned plant, and while the whole place was dusty and a little bug-inhabited, rinsing off the smell of several hundred miles of road was worth playing dodge-spider. The hot shower took the edge off the aches and stubborn stiffness of a long, hard ride. Two years of neglecting riding were taking their toll, and even before her father's death she'd never gone on such an extended trip before.

And even if she had, she very much doubted such trips would have involved clinging like a limpet to the back of a Tomahawk and fighting giant robots. The network of angry purpling bruises would attest to that.

Tolerably clean, she returned to the empty room, likely once an office, where Bobby had set up a cot for her. Several hours of sleep had felt like heaven. It was now some unidentifiable grey hour of morning, and as she slipped on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt she resolved to find someone who had a watch. Timekeeping had been the function of her late-and-lamented cell phone. She left her leathers draped over a couple chairs to air out and made her way out into the open floor of the warehouse proper.

The yellow Camaro-- Bumblebee, she recalled-- was no longer parked along the wall, but the big black truck was, silent and motionless, looking as innocent as an ordinary (if slightly overpowered) vehicle. Nic knew better-- somewhere underneath the shape of the truck lurked person-sized guns and a personality that reminded her of that one cousin of Terry's who liked to show off the stuffed bear he'd killed, and describe in great gleeful detail how. Ironhide, and what a name for a tough old gunner. After a moment's hesitation she waved at him, but got no response. Probably asleep, or recharging, or offline or whatever they called it.

Of Whiplash, Ratchet and Optimus Prime there was no sign. Nor of any of the soldiers or the two kids, who she supposed might still be sleeping. But she soon spotted one human figure standing just outside the open bay door.

"Morning, Nic." Bobby flashed her a grin as she approached. "Kinda figured you'd be out 'till noon, with all the drama yesterday."

"Force of habit," Nic replied, and leaned in to peek at his watch. "I have to get up almost every day for work, so... seven-forty-five. I actually overslept by half an hour. Where is everybody?"

"Bumblebee took Sam to get some breakfast, Prime's patrolling the area, you'n me are the only other humans up." Bobby ticked off on his fingers. "The gun nut's napping inside, the medic's down that way giving your boy a workout or something."

At the far end of the lot, just at the beginning of the road, stood the brightly-colored figure of Ratchet, hands on hips as he watched something beyond the trees that blocked the road from view.

Bobby gave her a nudge. "Go on, he doesn't bite. No teeth."

"Cute." Nic let her eyes roll, smiling anyway as she walked down towards Ratchet. She hoped Whiplash being given a 'workout' meant he was repaired, or at least reassembled-- seeing him in literal pieces like that had been rather unsettling, even reasoning that having a limb detached didn't mean quite the same thing to a robot as it would a human.

Ratchet's head turned to look down at her as she approached. At five feet with boots on, Nic was used to feeling short but this took the prize. Once she'd gotten over the 'holy crap!' factor she found the sensation of being not merely short but _tiny_ to be an interesting one, though she was surprised she wasn't all that intimidated. Just fascinated.

"Multiple contusions," Ratchet said. "Minor abrasion and laceration over the left frontal and temporal bones. Very lucky for such delicate physiology."

"Good morning to you too," Nic chirped.

"Whiplash expressed concern over your fluid loss. My research indicated that head wounds tend to bleed out of proportion to their severity and thus you aren't in any danger." Facial plates shifted almost as if he were sniffing at something in the air. "Please excuse me. I've been told that scanning people without their permission is rude, but it's a very hard habit to break."

"That's... okay," Nic replied, not quite sure how to handle the brusque medic. "How's Whiplash doing?"

"See for yourself." Ratchet lifted a hand and pointed down the twisting mountain road.

A very familiar chainsaw growl preceded the blue shape darting around a bend in the road. Whiplash, in bike mode, took the turn at an aggressive, eager tilt and flew full-out directly towards them. But the grin spreading across Nic's face was halted--

There was someone _riding_ him. Black-clad, helmeted, and-- before she could get a good look, Whiplash was upon them, and the 'rider' vanished in a flash of light. The Tomahawk transformed without stopping, launching in a flip right over her head to land in a perfect kung-fu crouch on the asphalt.

"Showoff." Nic couldn't help but giggle as Whiplash stood, all limbs and armor accounted for and looking delighted beyond measure. He was still scuffed and dented, but to a much lesser degree than last night.

"For once," he said, laughing, "everything is working!"

"Enjoy that while it lasts," Ratchet muttered, leaning over the smaller mechanoid and poking mysteriously at underlying cables and gears. "Please, try and take it easy for a little while. At least until your systems integrate the repairs."

"This global communication and information network--" Whiplash stumbled under the medic's heavy hands, toes splayed wide as he continued to babble. "--impressive, very impressive, I had no _idea_ when I was looking for the language data. What a relief to have proper reception again! Curious, though, such diverse methods of mating for a single organic species, perhaps you can explain--"

_Oh god. He discovered porn._

"Nic? Your skin is changing color."

"I'm okay," she hastened to assure him, taking a deep breath, trying not to titter like an immature brat at the very thought of having to give a space robot '_The Talk._' "So you do the hologram thing now?"

A low hum vibrated through the air, and with a flickering of light, a figure appeared standing next to Whiplash. Wiry-framed, male, and dressed in leathers patterned identical to hers, with a helmet hiding the face behind a mirror-tinted visor. Nic poked experimentally at the projection's shoulder, and her hand passed through empty air, though she felt a slight staticky tingle.

"It is not perfect," Whiplash admitted. "The human face is more difficult to simulate than I thought. A dishonest thing in any case."

"Your alternate mode requires it," Ratchet put in. "You don't have the mass to assume an enclosed vehicle."

The hologram vanished with a flash, leaving the sharp tang of ozone in the air. "I am content to be as I am constructed." Whiplash waved dismissively. "And fully functional and able to perform my duties again at last."

He continued to chatter happily about how grand it was to be able to _sense_ and _link_ and _communicate_ and _scan_ once more, as Ratchet continued the brief examination, in turn muttering about _jostled cables_ and _needless acrobatics_. Nic stood there, watching the two robots talk quite literally over her head, grin and blush long faded. In their place, there came a kind of dull, dismal realization.

Whiplash was repaired, restored to his own kind, and safe. He even had a fake rider. Mission accomplished. _He doesn't need me any more._

Really, what had she been expecting? The soldiers all had weapons, training and experience, that Sam kid had saved the whole damn planet, and Mikaela had helped Bumblebee take down a Decepticon tank. Nic? Threw rocks and poked out optics. Decepticons beware.

She turned and ambled back towards the warehouse. Maybe Whiplash would give her a lift to a Greyhound station or something.

She'd had her little adventure.

It was time to go home.

* * *

_"Ravage has been destroyed. The Prime's contingent has recovered Autobot Whiplash. Probability of project's compromise: High._

_"Laserbeak, Buzzsaw: Return._

_"Wreckage, Incinerator, Swindle: Descend."_

* * *

Nic joined Bobby in leaning against the wall. "Do you have a cell phone I could use for a minute? Mine got subverted."

The soldier paused, giving her a once-over before slipping his phone out of his pocket and handing it to her. "Something wrong?"

Nic straightened, aware she looked as if she'd just been picked last for softball. "No, just... coming down off the adrenaline, I guess." She pushed back still-slightly-damp hair and chewed at her lip, looking over the top of the phone to where the robots stood. As she watched, the massive semi that was Optimus Prime rolled up the road, stopping before Ratchet and Whiplash to transform.

"I will never get tired of that," Bobby remarked, grinning ear to ear.

Her uncle's number only half-dialed, Nic watched as Bumblebee appeared right behind Optimus, and likewise transformed after letting Sam out. Sam started walking up towards the warehouse, bearing a pair of paper sacks, while the four mechanoids began discussing something in a chorus of buzzing and humming.

"Do you think they'd let me come visit?" She turned to Bobby. "I know they probably have to go back into hiding or something, but..."

He regarded her with a raised brow. "You're leaving?"

"Yeah." Nic looked back to the phone in her hand, but somehow couldn't finish dialing. "I mean, I did what I set out to do... Whip's safe now..."

"Well I--"

"You're going to get kinda popular in a minute, Nic," interrupted a rather cranky-looking Sam, stalking past into the warehouse. "Secret Squirrel's on his way up."

Nic pushed off the wall. "--uh, what?"

"Hell if I know." Bobby shrugged and raised his voice to call after the boy. "Sam-- I left my 'Spaz-to-English Dictionary' at home."

"Simmons," came Sam's curt reply.

"Who's Simmons?"

"Government liaison to the Autobots." Bobby looked a bit like he'd been chewing on a lemon. Nic warily shut the phone and handed it back to him. Down at the road, a black SUV rolled up into the lot. As it moved towards where the four robots stood, Optimus turned and flanked the vehicle, herding it towards the warehouse. Ratchet fell in behind the leader, and Bumblebee actually grabbed Whiplash by the shoulder and steered the smaller robot to his side away from the SUV.

By the time the entourage made it up to the entrance of the warehouse, Ironhide had rumbled outside and was in robot mode, followed by Sam, Mikaela and Lennox. Nic again found herself surrounded, only the attention was on the pair of suit-clad men getting out of the SUV.

"Reggie Simmons, Sector Sev-- Autobot Civilian Liaison," said one of the new arrivals, a reedy man with sharp eyes, wide smile and an outstretched hand. "You must be Nicole Darling."

Nic took the proffered hand briefly enough for one shake and withdrew. "I guess I am," she replied in as neutral a tone as possible, glancing around. Sam and Mikaela were actually glaring at Simmons, and Bumblebee still had himself deliberately interposed between the suited men and Whiplash, who merely looked on in bemused interest.

"Mr. Prime, how's it going?" Simmons turned the decidedly disingenuous smile up at the towering red-and-blue robot.

"Simmons." Optimus's tone was all business. "Please explain your business here. When I contacted Secretary Keller yesterday I made it clear that the situation was well in hand."

"Just doing our job here, big guy, not that we don't think you can't handle it, we just want to make sure everything's neat and tidy."

"Tom Banachek," the other man introduced himself, laying a briefcase on the hood of the SUV. "We're here to discuss the nature of your involvement with NBE 14, Miss Darling."

"En Bee Eee...?" Nic squinted at Banachek.

"Non-Biological Extraterrestrial," Simmons crisply informed her and pointed up at Whiplash. "Your buddy NBE 14 over there."

Nic raised an eyebrow. "His name is Whiplash."

"What, seriously?" Simmons cast another look back at the mechanoid in question. "You _do_ know that's our word for a spinal injury, right?"

"Simmons, liaise and get it over with," growled Lennox, arms folded across his chest.

"Can you please explain how exactly you initiated contact with NBE 14?" Banachek asked, approaching Nic with a sheaf of papers in hand.

"_Whiplash_, and it was the other way around." Nic frowned thinly at the mustachioed man. "He pulled me out of a creek--"

Simmons cut in. "You were swimming?"

"I slipped on a footbridge and fell. It'd been raining hard," Nic turned her frown on Simmons. "I could've drowned. He saved my life."

"Did you report the occurrence to anyone?" Banachek was blandness incarnate. "Police or your parents?"

"And do they know you're out here by yourself?" Simmons added.

"No, and I'm a big girl, thanks," Nic snapped, deciding perhaps it'd be better not to clarify that her uncle knew. She was beginning to see why everyone seemed to be giving these guys the hairy eyeball.

"I'm going to ask you to provide all the intel you can on the other NBEs." Banachek handed a bound booklet of paper to her. "And a detailed account of NBE 14's activity up to this point."

"My _name_ is Whiplash," the reluctantly-numbered blue robot put in.

"We asked you to stop this NBE nonsense," Ratchet added, looming over the two men. "Would it be so terrible to use our actual designations?"

Nic glanced down at the booklet.

_NON-BIOLOGICAL EXTRATERRESTRIAL WITNESS REPORT and NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT_ the cover said.

"An NDA?" Nic added her own glare to the chorus. "You want me to sign this?"

"You have to understand, missy," Simmons told her with the patient smile of someone addressing a five-year-old, "This is a matter of national security. The NBEs are classified above top secret, we don't want you showing up on some talk show a year from now--"

"You think she's going to _tattle?_" Now Mikaela entered the fray, standing at Bumblebee's feet. "After everything she's been through? If she was going to tell anyone she'd have done it already."

The booklet crimped in Nic's hands as she gripped it tighter. "Does this thing even allow me to come back and visit my friend?"

Banachek shook his head. "I'm afraid not. Civilian contact with the NBEs needs to be minimized."

"This is _bullshit,_ man." Bobby was behind Nic, hand on her shoulder. "The woman risked her life to help Whiplash. And now it's 'sign here, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out'?"

Banachek ignored him. "Once you sign, you will be fully compensated for any financial and property damage incurred during your encounter."

"Oh, that's considerate." Bobby stepped forward, beside Nic now. "At least she gets a receipt."

"Nic," said Lennox, looking directly at her from his spot near Ironhide's feet, "You don't sign anything you don't want to."

Simmons let out a sigh, turning to give the captain an annoyed glance. "We can't allow her to return home without--"

"Candyass!" Sam barked. "Me and Mikaela didn't sign anything!"

"Well, if you're feeling left out, Wickety--"

"_**Enough.**_"

All eyes and optics turned upward. Optimus Prime stood over the gathering, blotting out the morning sun, a stern mask of metal in place below his narrowed optics. Even though the _I-will-turn-this-car-around_ warning wasn't directed at her, Nic felt like shrinking back, marginally aware that she'd crumpled the NDA booklet nearly double in her fists.

"It has become clear to me," Prime began in an even voice, "how ill-suited the former Sector Seven agents may be in the position of liaison between us and your government."

Simmons peered up at the immense backlit silhouette. "If you'd just listen--"

"Your position is to act as an intermediary between the two parties and negotiate an outcome to situations that arise, ideally favorable to all involved." Optimus verbally rolled right over him. "But you have, from the very beginning, worked against us, if not actively then passively denying us any progress. I am more than willing to reach a compromise with your government, but it cannot and will not happen unless some form of mutual agreement is reached. And the current state of affairs is unacceptable and risky, not only for my people, but yours as well if we are not allowed to aid you to our fullest capacity. I have already made my displeasure known to Secretary Keller and will be discussing with him the reassignment of the civilian liaison position."

"You're _firing_ us?" Simmons flung his hands out, his face turning an interesting shade of red. "You can't fire us!"

Banachek put a restraining hand on his colleague's shoulder. "Then Captain Lennox--"

"Captain Lennox and his team are already our military liaison, and as such, are answerable to the government. The purpose of the civilian agent is to be outside that chain of command and be objective."

"If not us, then who?" Banachek asked.

"Samuel James Witwicky."

"_Me?_" Sam's head whipped around.

"Might I suggest someone who's old enough to vote?" Simmons scoffed, leveling a nasty look in the teen's direction.

"As I understand it, that chronological mark is not very far off for him, which makes the difference negligible. Sam has proven to be brave, clever, resourceful, quick-thinking, observant, and unafraid to challenge what he perceives as wrong. Qualities that a human will need in such a position. Moreover--" and Prime leaned over just slightly, fixing Simmons with a cold blue stare, "-- _we trust him._ I will be discussing the matter with Keller very soon, but it will be Sam's choice to accept the responsibility or not."

Sam sputtered gleefully for a second. "Yes! Yes, I accept!"

"Now, hold on a minute," Simmons protested. "We weren't just twiddling our thumbs during the Mission City fiasco. I was risking my ass with NBE 7--"

"Your actions during the battle for the Allspark are not in question here. You did acquit yourself admirably against Decepticon Frenzy, and for your part in the effort we are appreciative." Prime straightened. "There may yet be other ways you and the other former Sector Seven agents can aid us, but this is not it."

The mask withdrew, revealing Optimus's face in full, and with a whispering of whirring gears, the great Autobot took a half-step back and took in the gathering with a long pause. Then, settling arms across his chest as if taking a deep breath, he spoke again. "Sam, the position may not yet be formal, but it would entail the appointment of other human allies as the need arises. Now that Whiplash is fully functional, his duties as a scout may require him to be separate from other Autobots at times. But as he is so recently arrived to Earth, he may not be able to interact with the humans he may encounter without giving his true nature away. He will need a human partner, one he can rely on, one who possesses those same qualities we value in you."

The NDA wad-of-paper dropped from Nic's hands as she looked up, right into the twinkling optics of Optimus. The expression on the leader's face couldn't be anything but a very satisfied smile.

"Can you suggest such a human, Sam?" It was Bumblebee who spoke this time, this new voice quiet and staticky, but definitely amused. Whiplash took a few sideways steps in her direction, glancing alternately at Sam, Prime, and Nic.

"Hey, Nic," Sam said. "You want a job?"

All eyes and optics on her now, and for a long moment, all Nic could do was look at Whiplash and grin.

* * *

_Author's Note: aaaand there's the Speechimus Prime I almost had last chapter. A lot of what he's said in this chapter is stuff I pulled out of the last, because it didn't flow quite right, and unloading all those words on Simmons seemed like a better use for them._

_So now we know why Whip's words are all borked, and I gave him an NBE number according to his appearance (I figure S7 has them numbered in the order that they were encountered/reported (IDW's prequel comic included), and I had to make a list to keep it straight. Next up: we actually find out what Rodimus was up to, and robots fight and shoot stuff and everybody explodes! Yay! (ahem) Something like that, anyway. _


	10. Wolves at the Door

_Politics._

The word rippled across the comm channel with a thick harmonic of sarcasm. Whiplash nearly flinched; he'd almost forgotten what friendly frequencies felt like.

_The same on any planet,_ Ironhide continued, ambling casually around to Prime's left side. _Something to be said for universal constants._

_A necessary unpleasantness, old friend,_ Optimus Prime reprimanded gently, _only remember that this human is one of our most important allies here._

In the cool dampness of the dam chamber, Whiplash quietly skirted around behind the others until he could get a good view of the humans between the bulk of Prime and Ratchet. Political process was something of an esoteric mystery to him. He'd often heard Perceptor complain nostalgically about the 'politics' of the Cybertronian scientific community, and Powerglide had been protégé to an Iaconian councilor before the war. But Whiplash himself knew little of the actual workings.

_Who is he? The humans' Prime?_ Whiplash ventured, aiming the transmission at Bumblebee.

_Not quite. They call their Prime the President. At least this certain principality America does. Not all of Earth is one nation._ Bumblebee sent a quick databurst, and Whiplash had to fight off another flinch, letting the information into his system. _John Keller is the current Secretary of Defense. His position is more similar to Lord High Protector than Prime._

_He is like Megatron? _Whiplash turned incredulous optics on his fellow scout.

_No-- not Megatron, the position. What it was before Megatron's madness. Before the war._

Before the war. Whiplash had difficulty thinking the title Lord High Protector without the undercurrent of terror and death he'd only ever heard it spoken in. Still, Prime trusted this Keller. That counted for a great deal.

"The need for cooperation is serious, Secretary Keller, especially now. Through no fault of his own, Whiplash has become herald of another threat," Optimus was saying aloud, over the comm chatter. "The Decepticons Ravage, Rumble and Buzzsaw were merely foot soldiers, and their commander is doubtless on his way, if not already on the planet."

For a moment, the damp, cool chamber inside the Hoover Dam was quiet. Keller's eyes briefly landed on Whiplash, then back up to Prime. The humans-- Keller, Nic, Sam and Mikaela, Captain Lennox, Simmons and Banachek-- were standing on a wide elevated ledge, putting them at Optimus's waist height to better speak with them.

"You're not bringing another Megatron down on us, I hope." Keller's tone was sharp, bordering on accusing.

"Not as powerful, no," Prime replied. "But a formidable enemy nonetheless. Whiplash-- what can you tell us about Soundwave's crew?"

Whiplash came to attention, legs lengthening to full extension as he approached the ledge. "Soundwave commands Decepticons Rumble, Laserbeak, Buzzsaw, his symbiotes; Swindle, Wreckage, and Incinerator are with him as well. Symbiotes Ratbat and Ravage are confirmed terminated."

"Laserbeak?" he heard Keller mutter.

"_Ratbat?_" Nic added.

"Rumble was left buried under a derelict structure in the city Topeka," Whiplash continued crisply. "It is unknown if he was killed, or might be able to dig himself out eventually."

"Let's not count him out just yet," Ratchet put in. "But if he is still in action, he'll be damaged, as will Buzzsaw. I'd wager Soundwave is already planetside attending to them. We may not have much time."

Captain Lennox leaned on the railing. "So that's... five Autobots versus possibly seven Decepticons. Buzzsaw and Laserbeak are running around in UAV suits. Do we know what altmodes the other guys are wearing?"

"Rumble's a Civic," Nic said. "Purple, with a spoiler the size of a surfboard and spinner rims."

"Spinners?" snorted Sam.

"Yeah, I thought it was funny too, 'till he gave me a haircut with one."

"...oh."

"As for the rest of them," Whiplash said, "Wreckage will most likely choose something heavy and well-armored. A ground vehicle. Likewise for Swindle, though he is much smaller and lighter-- he falls between myself and Bumblebee in terms of mass. Incinerator is flight-capable and the largest of them. Soundwave himself... I cannot say for certain."­­

Keller was staring directly at him. Quickly, Whiplash skimmed back over his own audio logs. No misspoken words, to his relief.

"Why is this Soundwave after you? Seems an awful lot of trouble for just one Autobot." The white-haired human gestured up and down Whiplash's lanky frame. Whiplash backed up a few steps, suddenly unsure how to answer, legs receding to their default length.

Megatron had been one matter. The tyrant had been here for an uncertain amount of time, imprisoned in the planet's own polar ice and then held by the humans themselves. But Whiplash was leading more Decepticons here, right in his wake, bringing the war down on this little blue world again.

Optimus spoke before Whiplash could offer the Secretary of Defense an utterly useless apology.

"Whiplash's commander entrusted him with a secret that the Decepticons wanted to keep hidden. Soundwave has hunted him so relentlessly to keep him from warning other Autobots, but in that, thankfully, they failed... though the price was high." Optimus paused, optics briefly resting on Whiplash. "I have decrypted the message and the accompanying data. As our allies and hosts, you have as much right to hear this as we do."

* * *

_Bellum Cybertronia 11984.9036: Autobot Subcommander Rodimus, exploration vessel _Axalon 7_. Crew manifest: Rodimus, Perceptor, Powerglide, Bluestreak, Whiplash._

_If this file is being accessed, it means I and my crew are dead, except for the courier. And I can only hope he has reached other Autobots in one piece._

_Just over an orn ago Powerglide caught Ratbat sabotaging the _Axalon_'s systems. Apparently he's been at it awhile; that explains the trouble we've been having. Propulsion's the worst off; sublight engines are at fifty percent and warp is impossible without extensive repairs. Primary forward cannons are a total loss. The slagger got to our outer communications array too, and even if we could set a distress beacon, I fear we're too far scattered for help to arrive in time._

_Ratbat has generously 'donated' some of his own components to help with repairs._

_As bad as this is, I have a feeling the worst is yet to come. We were being softened up. The real blow is coming-- and soon. This isn't just a zero-g scuffle. Soundwave is going to make sure we can't warn anyone about what they're doing._

_Perceptor was the one who heard about Shockwave's latest pet horror first, six vorn ago. This was after a bombing on a Nebulan research outpost. I heard Skyfire was there not long before, and the Nebulans are blaming him for it-- rumor also is that there was some technology stolen in the raid beforehand, which is hardly surprising. But if what Perceptor suspected was true, whatever the Decepticons took is being used to develop a superweapon._

_We don't know what it is, exactly. Perceptor thinks it is a weapon of limited use and of last resort, otherwise they would have used it on us by now. What intel we've managed to get by spying has been enough to make my cables curl. This is big, and they clearly don't want us warning other Autobots. _

_Embedded in the files that follow is everything Perceptor could find about the weapon. Use the information to develop countermeasures if you can. If Soundwave is bothering to hunt us this persistently, it must be worth it. And please, tell Whiplash. He's not going to ask on his own, but he deserves to know what this is about._

_If we're lucky, we'll survive the attack and no one will ever hear this message. But luck hasn't been kind to us lately. Powerglide, Bluestreak and Whiplash don't even know what's going on._

_I hope they can forgive me._

_Rodimus out._

* * *

"Fuckin' doomsday again," Nic heard Captain Lennox mutter.

She felt suddenly cold inside, echoes of a voice of a long-dead Autobot ringing in her ears. She looked around at her fellow humans and could see the dawning dread in their faces. Sam in particular had gone ghost-white, and she could almost hear what they were all thinking:

_Not again._

Keller gripped the railing, looking downward, refusing to look up at Optimus Prime, who for his part seemed to have taken on a great and unpleasant weight across his mighty shoulders. All the robots, indeed, had gone disturbingly subdued; Bumblebee's door-wings were folded nearly flat down his back, and Ironhide was as motionless as stone, scowling down at massive arms crossed over his chest. Whiplash looked as if he would vomit if he were at all capable of it, or fall apart into a pile of cogs and cables where he stood.

"What, exactly," said Keller at length, "does this mean, Prime?"

But it was Ratchet who answered him. "Shockwave was one of Cybertron's most brilliant scientists. During the war he created technology and weaponry responsible for some of the worst atrocities in our history. We haven't yet been able to draw any conclusions from what the data contained, and I'm reluctant to speculate, but anything he's had his hand in _will not _be pleasant."

"And that miscreant Soundwave is bringing it down here." Cannon components whirred in Ironhide's arms, never quite forming completely.

"Just what do you propose we do?" demanded Keller. "Megatron's dead, the Allspark's gone-- what the hell do they think they're going to accomplish? This war of yours should be over!"

"Indeed it should," Optimus replied evenly, "but you must understand, while we Autobots are a unified force, scattered though we are, the Decepticons have always been plagued with internal conflict-- factions within factions, united only by Megatron through fear. His lieutenants have agendas of their own, and I cannot guess at what is behind the alliance of Soundwave and Shockwave."

"Whiplash-- Soundwave's ship, what class is it?" Ratchet asked.

"The _Anathema_?" Whiplash tilted his head. "No bigger than the _Axalon 7_ was, but better armed, unfortunately."

"And what other Decepticon vessels did you encounter before the attack on the _Axalon_?"

"Only one; a Hyperion-class near the-- the bombed Nebulan research station..."

"Then we're exceedingly lucky," the medic said, turning to Keller. "If there's one weakness Shockwave has, it's that doesn't let anyone else play with his toys. Soundwave won't have the weapon with him. Like as not, Shockwave is on that Hyperion-class, and those ships are more like mobile laboratories. They're big, but they aren't built for battle, or speed, for that matter."

"So the Shockwave guy isn't going to be here for a long time?" Sam asked hopefully.

Ratchet nodded. "If he's coming at all."

"That still leaves us with Soundwave and his crew to deal with now," put in Bumblebee.

"But Whip delivered the message already," Nic said. "Now everybody knows about the weapon. What's the point in coming after him now?"

"Vindictiveness. Spite for killing Ravage. Just that we're Autobots who happen to be in easy reach." Ironhide shrugged. "And to shut us up."

"Soundwave must be stopped here," Optimus continued. "Which is why we need to be able to rely on our human allies for aid... and have them trust us in turn. Mistrust at this juncture could be deadly."

Nic watched as Keller leaned on the railing, shoulders drawn tight. For a moment she was sure he'd demand that the robots get off their planet and take their apocalypses with them.

"Agreed," the old man said at last.

"Sir--" Simmons cut in.

Keller rounded on him. "We've got round two incoming and the last thing that's going to help is your guerilla bureaucracy, Simmons," he snapped. "For now, the kid is in charge. But on one condition." He turned, gestured to include everyone. "The former Sector Seven agents remain on in an advisory capacity until Mr. Witwicky is eighteen, and we'll reassess the situation at that point. That means you play nice and quit stonewalling the robots at every turn. And Sam, I expect you to be serious about this and _work_ with them, in a professional manner. Can you do that?"

Sam leveled a look at Simmons. "...I can, sir."

"And you two?" Keller turned to Simmons and Banachek.

Simmons looked about to say something, but Banachek put a hand on his shoulder before he could speak. "We'll do it, sir. Reggie can handle the field work."

A curious look passed between the two former agents, and Nic saw Banachek's hand tighten briefly on Simmons's shoulder before letting go.

"It's an acceptable compromise," Optimus said. "Thank you, Secretary Keller."

"Miss Darling," Keller said.

Nic tried not to jump like she'd been caught reading comics in class. "Yessir?" _Crap, what do you call the Secretary of Defense? Your Honor? Your Majesty? Your Defensiveness?_

Keller smiled gently, as if sensing her internal fumble. He took her hand in a firm shake. "Guess this wasn't what you were expecting... I'm sorry you got dragged into this."

The universe had suddenly become a tiny place, crowded and hostile, and there were wolves at the door. Mere weeks ago this realization might have sent her further into herself, keeping all the insanity at a safe arm's length. Uncle Terry had been right: it had taken something falling out of the sky to wake her from the self-pity she'd been stubbornly wallowing in for the last two years. This was bigger than her grief, bigger than the rut in which she'd been spinning her wheels. She had friends now, powerful friends, who _wanted_ her, and a well of strength she'd never known she had.

"All due respect," Nic replied with half a shrug, "nobody dragged me. I jumped in eyes wide open. I'm in it for the long haul, sir."

_No matter what falls out of the sky._

* * *

"This is where they held him?"

Bumblebee waved at the concrete platform in the center of the great chamber. "Yes. Locked in cryostasis for over a vorn. The planet's polar environment itself did the work before that..."

Whiplash experimentally exposed his atmospheric sensors. Now that the connections had been repaired, he could detect the residual tang of alloys that were distinctively Cybertronian, unlike the somewhat heavier readings of Earth-made metals. Whiplash's atmospheric sensors were calibrated a little higher, more fine-tuned, than most; useful but sometimes prone to sensory overload, so he used them sparingly, keeping the protective facial vents closed most of the time. With his sensor net back up, he was glad of this habit-- Earth's air was even fuller than his greatly-reduced scans had previously reported. Microbes, bacteria, water vapor (certainly a lot of that here, in this 'Hoover Dam' edifice), chemical compounds, solid particulate matter...

"I saw him once," Whiplash said, gazing around at the scaffolding and cables, the humans' effort to clean up the last telltale signs of ruin. "In Kaon, before the city was bombed. I was carrying word from another commander to send reinforcements, and he was suddenly _there_, as I turned a corner. He was blocking the passage out, standing over an entire squad of dead Autobots.

"He turned and looked right at me, and I thought for certain he would simply destroy me. But he left without a word. I was too insignificant to waste the effort."

"I consider it the height of poetic justice that he was brought down by that which he considered insignificant. Humans have a way of thinking, of doing the unexpected," Bumblebee said. "He underestimated them, and paid the price for his arrogance. Because of Sam... the end is in sight."

_("And because of me, the end is further off yet.")_

There was a distinctly uncomfortable pause from the other. "I'm sorry, Whiplash-- I couldn't understand you just then."

His own native language! Whiplash shook his head and turned away from the spot where the Decepticon leader had been held, pacing stiffly away. "If I had returned to the _Axalon_ a little sooner--"

"You would have been destroyed as well." The voice of Optimus Prime so startled Whiplash that his blades clicked in their sheaths, nearly emerging.

"Rodimus knew it was a battle he could not win. Because of you, they did not die in vain." Prime stood in the mouth of one of the rounded tunnels that led outside to the base of the dam. Two great strides brought the leader right in front of Whiplash. "You did exactly what you should have done and you have accomplished your mission against incredible odds. Rodimus would have been proud of you."

"Please excuse me, Prime," Whiplash said, standing straighter. "It is only that hearing his voice again after all this time was... unsettling."

"I understand. There will be time later to mourn properly, but for now we must prepare to defend ourselves. And first, I have a mission for you."

Whiplash looked up. "Sir!"

"Ironhide and I will be patrolling the immediate area while you and Bumblebee make an excursion. Boulder City is approximately eight miles west of here." Optimus smiled. "Your partner requires some supplies. Report back here to Ratchet when you are done."

* * *

_"I have just spotted the Prime ­and Autobot Ironhide leaving the hydroelectric water-retention structure. This confirms native reports of Cybertronian activity here."_

_"Do we attack now?"_

_"Negative, Incinerator. Buzzsaw, report."_

_"The human settlement called Mission is partially in ruin. I'm reading residual weapons signatures, but no sign of present Autobot occupation. Unlikely they're using this as a base of any sort. Too much exposure."_

_"Agreed. Reroute to the dam and--"_

_"Auotbots Whiplash and Bumblebee confirmed leaving the dam. They are with the Prime and-- wait, they're taking an alternate route. Should I follow?"_

_"Affirmative. Buzzsaw will take up surveillance of the dam. The whereabouts of Autobots Ratchet and Jazz are still unknown. Wreckage, Incinerator: engage the Prime and Ironhide when there is sufficient distance from the location of Autobot Whiplash. Swindle: Convene with Rumble and myself at the following coordinates. I must first ascertain if the message has been delivered."_

_"It's still possible the little slagger didn't know anything and we came down to this mudball for nothing. And we still don't know what in the Pit the Prime and his crew were doing here. Did they find the Allspark or what?"_

_"Swindle: Silence. Proceed with your orders."_

_"My optic still hurts-- Soundwave, can I kill the spotted human? Please? I'll make Whiplash watch..."_

* * *

"I didn't know Dodge made motorcycles," said Mikaela, watching as Whiplash passed by Bumblebee's passenger side, drifted across the front, then dropped back again around the Camaro's driver side.

"They don't," Nic replied. "They made the Tomahawk a couple years ago to show off the Viper engine. It's practically just an engine with wheels attached and there's only ten in existence. My uncle knew a guy who knew a guy and managed to get one to put in our showroom for the shop's renovation. Which reminds me, I should ask him if anyone tried to buy it."

"How much does it cost?" Sam turned, looking at her over the headrest.

"How's a cool half million and change grab you?"

"And you got him for _free_." Sam turned back around and cradled his face in his hands.

Mikaela flicked his ear. "Oh, don't be so dramatic."

Nic smiled, glancing between the two. "What, you mean... you didn't _buy_ Bumblebee."

"Half. Two K. At a used car lot from a guy who would try to sell ice to penguins," Sam replied through his fingers. "The sneaky robot was pretending to be just an innocent little old Camaro."

"How curious that all the other vehicles' windows suddenly shattered." Bumblebee sounded entirely too bland. Nic decided she didn't want to know.

"God, if I'd had to pay for half a Tomahawk..."

"Two hundred and seventy-five thousand United States dollars," rang the pleasant and unaccountably British voice of the car. "Though according to the internet, the vehicles are sold missing key components."

"Yeah, they're not street legal." It made sense, Nic mused, that Whiplash would have the crisp 'accentless' Midwestern accent-- it was the same as hers, after all-- but Bumblebee's lilting British dialect? She wasn't sure how to ask. "I tried convincing him to try on something a little less... _that_, but he won't hear it."

"I can attempt alterations to conform to the 'street legal' protocols," said Whiplash's voice, issuing distantly from Bumblebee's speakers. Outside, the holographic rider turned its helmeted head to 'look' at her through the window. "But I still maintain that this vehicle is the best for my needs."

Nic rolled her eyes. "Better make those alterations while I'm buying a new helmet, Whip," she said, with a _see what I mean?_ look to Sam. "I imagine we might get stopped a lot anyway, and somehow I think 'but officer, he's an alien robot' won't go over too well."

The motorcycle shop turned out to be a decent affair, a simple outlet in a small strip mall. A quintet of bikes lined the curb directly outside, cruisers by the looks of them, two of the accompanying riders lounging against their mounts. Both bikers stood up straighter as Bumblebee and Whiplash pulled into the parking lot, and Nic pursed her lips, trying to think of excuses to fend her fellow bikers off. Ordinarily she'd have loved to stand around and trade motorcycle stats, brag, mutually covet each others' accessories; she definitely missed that part of the culture-- but unlike at the net café in Topeka, these bikers would smell the 'it's a custom job, go away' bullshit. It'd be impossible to bluff a biker about a bike.

The two bikers were walking out towards them, obviously interested in the strange blue machine that had just thundered in. Bumblebee pulled up to the curb, forming a barrier as Whiplash slipped into a service road that led around behind the building. Sam hopped out the instant Bumblebee had stopped and strode to intercept the bikers.

"Hey! Hey guys, can you give us directions? We're trying to get to Route 66..."

Mikaela tugged on Nic's arm as she crawled out from the backseat. "C'mon, while Sam's got them distracted. Don't worry about Whiplash. They can hide pretty good when they want to."

A moment later Sam followed them into the shop while Nic browsed the modest selection of helmets. She frowned. She'd liked her old one. Plain, serviceable, but it had fit nicely, broken in from years of use. This shop seemed to favor racing helmets, with outlandish color patterns and streamlined protuberances all over. And some of them were painfully expensive.

"That one with the lightning bolts looks sharp," said a voice behind her. Nic turned and was treated to the sight of a fatigue-clad chest inches away from her nose.

She gave Bobby a light thump with a fist and took a small step away. "Shouldn't sneak up on people."

"My bad. Wouldn't want you to kick my ass again," he replied, indicating the small cut on his lip.

Nic winced. "Yeah, I did that, didn't I? I'm sorry."

"No, it's good. I understand why. Had to protect your friend."

"What're you doing here? Keeping an eye on the newbie?"

"Making sure you guys've got backup if you need it. Westing and McBride are out in the jeep." Bobby plucked a shiny blue display helmet off the wall. "This one kinda matches his color."

"Uh-uh, it's open-face." Nic ran a finger along the padded ridge of the visorless helmet. "Full-face is better if I have to take a spill."

Her dad had liked open-face helmets. In fact, change the color of the helmet Bobby was holding to brown and mustard yellow, scuff the hell out of the finish, and that was her father's favorite helmet. Eugene had liked the feel of the wind on his face, he'd said, while Nic herself had preferred not to have to facefulls of flying road dust and bugs while riding.

"--before?"

Nic blinked. "Sorry, what?"

"I said," and Bobby replaced the helmet on the wall, "what kind of bike did you ride before your close encounter?"

"I didn't." Nic picked up a modestly-priced, not-too-flashy black helmet with chromed trim and examined the interior. "I'd quit riding. Got a Civic."

She could feel Bobby's eyes on her, but she didn't look up.

"Quit? What for?"

"Personal reasons," Nic replied, and settled the helmet over her head to check the fit, but also to give herself a moment to get rid of the troubled expression she knew she was wearing. Thinking about the helmet led to thinking about her dad, and thinking about her dad led to thinking about the accident, which usually made her want to go sulk by herself. Such old habits had a way of hanging around like relatives you can't get to leave, though since she'd met Whiplash, she'd gotten a lot better about it.

Didn't mean she wanted to wave her sympathy card at a guy she barely knew.

"Good fit," she decided out loud, removing the helmet and giving it another once-over, testing the visor for kinks raising and lowering. It had good ventilation, too. She brought it up to the counter and rang the bell.

"I'm going to radio we're on our way back," Bobby said. "You got this?"

"Yeah, I'm good."

Nic poked through a pile of head-scarfs, selecting one that wasn't too obnoxiously paisley as the cashier wandered up to the desk. The young man eyed her interestedly as he rang up the helmet and scarf.

"You with the guy on that blue... whatinahell?" he asked. "The one parked out back? You're wearing the same uniform."

"Yeah, he's my partner," Nic replied, grinning, her mood doing a perfect one-eighty. _Partner._ Her _partner_ was a _giant space robot_.

The clerk grinned back. "Partner? Doesn't look like there's a place to ride bitch on that thing."

"No, we're a team," she replied loftily, telling her inner eight-year-old to quit squealing. "We build experimental designs, engines, that sort of thing. I'm the rider. He's only riding it now because some idiot in a Jaguar ran over my helmet back in Colorado." She tapped the new helmet and laughed. "Good to get back in the seat where I belong, y'know?"

"Your bullshit-fu is strong," Sam commented as she approached the door with her purchases. "Teach me your ways, wise one."

"Sorry?"

"Sam has to explain Bumblebee to his parents when we go back home," Mikaela clarified, replacing a leather jacket she'd been trying on as a joke. The garment was festooned in fringes nearly as long as her arms. "We've been trying to think of something they'll believe."

"How about the truth?" she said as they exited the shop. She set her new helmet down for a moment to tie the handkerchief over her hair; it would do a much better job of keeping her hair in line than the smaller scarf had. "It might work better than you think."

"The truth?" Sam glanced over to where Bumblebee was parked. The Camaro, for his part, surreptitiously turned his front wheels in their direction.

Nic shrugged. "I told my uncle. Showed him, even."

"_What?_" both teens sputtered.

"I wasn't about to take off on a potentially dangerous trip to God-knew-where without telling him why," Nic said, one hand perched on her hip. "Relax-- he's not going to go on the six o'clock news or anything. I trust him. When my dad died he-- he's my second father. I owed him the truth."

Sam blinked. "And he just let you go?"

"Considering I'm twenty-one, he couldn't very well forbid me," Nic chuckled. "But he loves me. I couldn't lie to him. Your folks love you, Sam?"

"Yes. I mean, I'm pretty sure they do, if the frequency of grounding is any indication." Sam ran his hands through his hair and exhaled noisily. "It's just-- _alien robot,_ Nic."

"Well, I'm not saying take out a billboard and tell your whole town, just your parents. It's a trust thing." She shrugged again. "Try the truth. You might be surprised."

* * *

Whiplash noted Nic's biosign approaching from around the end of the low structure. Processor contentedly logging the information, still reveling in the feel of properly functioning scanners, he spared an irritated sensor sweep at the pair of humans lingering at the back entrance of the next partition over from the motorcycle accessory acquisition facility. Two males, conversing about speculative mating activities with various females, pausing to intake noxious fumes produced by the smoldering tips of tiny white tubes.

Cautiously, Whiplash accessed the internet and had surprisingly little trouble discovering what the tubes were.

_Great Matrix, they do that voluntarily?_

One of them had even gone through two of the tubes in the time he'd been parked here, and neither showed signs of stopping and leaving, so he could turn off the holographic rider. He felt rather foolish with a collection of semi-coherent light perched atop his alternate mode. Especially since it had no real face. At first he had wanted to faithfully replicate Nic's appearance, but Bumblebee had cautioned him that the actual Nic might find her holographic doppelganger unnerving. So the tedious task of building an original image it was. The human face was so difficult-- for all it seemed simple, there were subtle complexities in the way it moved, certain aspects of asymmetry... and besides which, creating a self-representation smacked of narcissism. For now, though, the featureless helmeted figure would do.

But he could worry about his false face later-- his partner was drawing nearer, a new helm in hand. Within moments they would return to the Dam and await orders from Prime, and then-- locate the Decepticons and rout the destroyers from this beautiful new homeworld.

As she approached, he wished the smoking humans would leave, so he could dissipate the hologram and--

One of the smokers threw down his cigarette and bolted, running down the alleyway behind the conjoined acquisition facilities. His companion stared after him, and suddenly dropped his own ashen tube, skin taking on an alarming paleness, clutching at his head while glancing wildly around. He fumbled with the latch of the door and all but dove within the facility.

Whiplash ran a diagnostic, thinking perhaps something was amiss with his hologram and he had inadvertently startled the young males, just as Bumblebee came around the end of the building. Nic had stopped in her tracks at the corner, pulling anxiously at the catch of her upper riding armor. And through Bumblebee's windshield, he could see Sam and Mikaela, both wearing identical wide-eyed expressions of fright.

"Nic," he said, letting his hologram drop as he rolled up to her side, putting her safely between the two Autobots. "What is wrong?"

"I-I-I don't know, I just--" Her voice had gone tight, pitched higher. "--feel like I can't breathe." She grabbed one of his handlebars for support.

"You are breathing," he assured her uncertainly. Indeed, she was perhaps breathing at twice her normal rate. Within the other scout, Sam had his head down on the steering wheel, arms wrapped around the steering column as if it were an anchor. "Bumblebee, something is wrong."

"Fifteen point eight-seven to sixteen point two-six hertz sine waves," Bumblebee replied. "Infrasound."

A low, pulsing hum, sure enough, registering at just those frequencies in his audio receptors. A sound? A _sound_ was inducing this sudden irrational terror in the humans? "That is what is causing this? I thought that was an atmospheric phenomenon."

"Not on this planet. Not with that regularity, anyway. And not this badly. Nic-- listen to me, you must get on Whiplash, now. Do you understand?"

"Ignore it, Nic," Whiplash added, engine turning over with a defiant thunder. "This fear is not yours. It is not real."

Nic nodded jerkily, easing a leg over Whiplash's seat. Her entire body shook, her fist on his handlebar white-knuckled. "Yeah. Yeah, not real. Ooooh damn. Dammit. _Oh god, Whip, get us out of here!_"

No sooner had the words left her vocalizer than a tremor rocked the pavement beneath their wheels, so fiercely that Whiplash was hard-pressed to remain upright and Nic, caught off-balance, tumbled to the ground, her new helmet rolling away.

Whiplash transformed as another tremor rattled in the wake of the first. He plucked Nic off the splintering asphalt and rode the earthquake, letting his legs absorb the motion until it died down.

In the aftermath of the shocks, Whiplash could hear vehicular anti-theft devices sounding off from all around, but the infrasound sine wave had stopped. Carefully he set Nic back down on her feet.

"You know what?" She snatched up her helmet and marched back to Whiplash. "I don't wanna know what the hell that was. Let's get out of here."

_**AUTOBOT WHIPLASH.**_

His processor locked up. "No..."

"Whiplash?" Bumblebee turned to him. "What is it?"

Squealing tires heralded the arrival of a bright red vehicle, a smallish car that skidded sideways into the service alley directly behind Bumblebee. The new arrival transformed and stood, long arching cranial sweep pivoting to pin Whiplash with a single central optic.

"Catch you at a bad time, longshanks?" Swindle asked cordially, even as his cannon warmed up.

From the other end of the alley, a mass of armor tumbled out of the shape of a battered purple car. Rumble raised his piledriver in one brutal motion and slammed it down, setting the earth to quaking once more. The tremor was almost more than Whiplash could withstand and he fell to one knee, bracing against Bumblebee, who had at some point let Sam and Mikaela out and had transformed himself.

"Communications are being blocked," Bumblebee reported, training his cannon on Swindle. "We must get the--"

_**FOR RAVAGE: YOU WILL SUFFER.**_

_("Get out of my processor, abomination!")_ Whiplash shrieked, slamming firewalls up in every level of his systems. _("You have failed!")_

Rumble laughed nastily, piston pulling back, his one remaining optic blazing crimson. "_Wow_. What in the Pit was that gobbledygook? Boss musta messed you up real good!"

"Oh, go suck your own tailpipe, Fumble," Nic snapped, holding onto one of Whiplash's leg struts.

"You hold still," Rumble shot back with a hiss of spinning wheel-blades, "while I find something to throw at _you_."

"I strongly suggest the both of you retreat," Bumblebee growled calmly. "Optimus Prime knows you are here and is on his way."

_**YOU LIE, AUTOBOT BUMBLEBEE.**_

From Bumblebee's sudden flinch, Whiplash knew the intrusive signal was meant for them both this time.

A large, hulking, armored blue-grey vehicle rolled up behind and around Rumble and almost casually unfolded. Though the alternate mode did much to change the outward appearance of a Cybertronian, no amount of alteration in the universe could disguise the cold, cruel frequency slicing at the edges of the two Autobots' processors. Optics hidden behind an amber visor surveyed their prey, and Soundwave stepped forward.

_**THERE IS NO HELP FOR YOU.**_

Distantly, Whiplash heard Nic scream, felt her collapse at his feet, just as his own systems warned him of firewall failure. Every function in his body seemed to seize up at once, and the only thing he could manage before crashing offline was to make sure he didn't crush her as he, too, fell.

* * *

_Author's Note: Er, not dead! Just attacked by life. Have a job and family to take care of first and foremost (fanfic, sadly, does not do much in the way of paying my rent, and I have to keep on my folks' good side or I'll never have grilled homemade burgers ever again. Gotta keep those priorities straight, you know). Thanks for being so patient, and I hope to get the next chapter out a little quicker so as not to leave you with that delicious cliffhanger. (Insert evil cackle here.)_

_Anyway, for those of you who aren't regulars on the Livejournal side, I have an LJ to serve as dumping grounds for all my giant robot ramblings, as well as some artwork for The Long Road Home and othersuch. The links will be found in my profile._

_Still More Author's Note: 1.23.09 Yeah, it's been awhile. Moved house twice, couple medical/financial setbacks, and some writer's block, but I'm back on track and Eleven will be forthcoming hopefully before the end of February if not sooner. But TLRH is not dead!_


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